


Marked Earth

by BurningTea



Series: The Blade's the Thing [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Archangel Castiel, Body mutilation, Castiel Angst, Castiel's True Form, Episode: s10e23 My Brother's Keeper, Hurt/Comfort, Injured Castiel, M/M, Not Really Character Death, Rowena's Attack Dog Spell, The Darkness - Freeform, eventual destiel, pre-destiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-03-31 22:32:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 46
Words: 61,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3995539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They find Cas in the dirt at the side of road, rabid and lost.</p><p>Rowena's spell has hold of Cas, Dean is near to hopeless about their chances against The Darkness and Sam has been consumed by the mission. When Sam's focus leads to digging into Cas' brain and pulling up a version of the angel they've never seen, Dean finds himself in something like a Lovecraftian nightmare. </p><p>Finding a way to fight The Darkness seems to mean they're losing Cas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dirt

**Author's Note:**

> I, er, started another one. It might just be this. It might not. I might write more of Some Things Can Never Die. Who knows? (I will really write more - I am just busy and tired and the inspiration faeries have been having a fight with the plot goblins, and I am not too sure I like Dean just about now... Maybe this will help me write my way back to loving him.)
> 
> I'm on tumblr as [humanformdragon](http://humanformdragon.tumblr.com/).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have two tumblrs. One is burningtea. The other is humanformdragon. The tea account is a fic and Destiel side-blog, but I am doing my usual thing and blogging that stuff on my main tumblr in any case, so it seems a bit daft not to say. If anyone wants to come and see me on tumblr, that's where I am.

They find Cas at the side of the road. 

Dean can't claim they went looking for him. Not really. Not with the way they bolted the moment the...the Darkness cleared enough to dig Baby out of that hole. It's a fucking miracle they're still alive, still them. Still the Winchesters. 

If they can claim to be that, anymore. 

Driving right past a lost angel on the mad dash away from murdering Death is lucky, he guesses. He tells himself it is, as he pulls the car over, grinds to a halt, forces himself out onto the side of the road with his friend. Lucky. Something he's pleased about. That's how it should be. How it ought to be. It shouldn't be nausea and hitched breath and an ache in his throat he can taste. He can feel Sam's eyes on him as he reaches out for Cas, Sam's eyes that will be fixed on Dean, that will show worry over Dean. Dean's not the one on his knees in the dirt, a coat that's far more ragged than it should be draped around him, swaying. Maybe, if either one of them had kept an eye on Cas, on...on Charlie, on anyone but each other, they might not be in this mess.

So he reaches out, even though his hand feels like it's burning as it closes the distance, feels like it's going to crumble to ash and smoke, the way Death did, as he gets near to touching Cas. It must be that feeling that makes him miss it at first, but then it's not like Cas is looking at him. All Dean can make out, really, as his hand closes on Cas' shoulder and doesn't erupt into flame, is that head of dark hair, even more disheveled than usual, almost as much as it was back in the day, when Cas was a heavenly Seraph of the Lord, bent on screwing with Dean until he bowed to destiny. Then Cas moves, his head snapping up, and Dean recoils.

He hits the dirt hard, the thump of it vibrating up his bones, and stares up at Cas. Even on his knees, Cas looms over him in this moment, but Dean sees the guy on his back, his lips carrying pleas and his hand grasping weakly at Dean. In Dean's mind's eye and right here on the side of the road, Cas' face is streaked with red. With blood. 

Didn't Sam make him clean up? Surely, Cas would know to clean up without being told, right? It was the first time Dean had set into him, sure, but Cas had taken beatings before. He'd always fixed himself up. Always. So why is he covered in blood?

It takes a moment longer for the growling to make it through.

"Cas?" Dean asks, the word barely more than a suggestion in the air. 

"Dean? Dean, what's wrong with him?" 

Sam's voice is right behind him, getting louder as his brother drops to the ground and grabs Dean under the armpits, hauling him upright until the two of them are staring down at Cas. Down at Cas and his growling and his eyes ringed in red.

"Dean..." Sam breathes. "Rowena."

He doesn't have to say anything else. That fucking attack dog spell. The one that killed that girl. 

"You left him alone with Rowena?" Dean demands, as the man who so recently said he would watch Dean for years, long after everyone else was dead, the friend who Dean had beaten until he'd stopped moving, even though the angel hadn't even been fighting back, glares up at him and growls, the low, constant rumbling so out of place it runs right by funny and hits tilting-the-world-on-its-axis disturbing. With no solid clue what to do here, Dean finds himself holding his hands out, palms up, like he might to a guard dog he stumbled across on a hunt. "What do we do?"

"He should have been able to handle her," Sam says, like Cas has failed some mid-year review. Like this is Cas' fault.

"That look like he handled it to you?" Dean twists one hand from flat-palmed to jabbing finger, and Cas hisses. Rises. Lunges.

This time, the ground hits his spine, driving the air out of him as he scrabbles to get hold of his friend, to push him away. He feels the scrape of something sharp down his neck and the jolt of adrenaline lets him surge up, driving the angel back and round until Cas is the one on his back, his hands pinned and the blade not able to get near Dean. Cas bucks and writhes, nearly throwing Dean off, and it takes Sam's help to keep the guy from breaking loose.

Dean tries to catch Cas' eyes, but there's nothing in them that says his friend is in there. Just snarling rage. Just another sign that the Winchesters destroy everyone who dares to love them.

"We gotta get him calmed down," Dean says, and he makes his voice be steady, even though his heart is beating hollow thuds against his ribs, it feels like. "There must be some way to break this spell."

"That girl..." Sam doesn't finish, but he doesn't need to.

"Forget about that!" Dean snaps. "Cas has to have lasted longer than that. Do you see anyone round here?" He pauses long enough that Sam can look around at the flat fields stretching out to either side of them, the road cutting through in the straight line. "Unless Rowena's hiding behind a rock, she's not here, so he's already got to have lasted longer than that girl. He’s not human. He's got his grace."

With a bellow, Cas seems to pulse, light and muscle throwing Dean and Sam away.

Dean's back on his feet within moments, but Cas already has Sam on the run, the larger man holding his arm in a way that says Cas has done some serious damage. For all Dean had Sam all set up for the scythe barely any time ago at all, his brother is alive in the here-and-now, alive and the next apocalypse already started, so sacrificing Sam is off the menu.

"Cas!" Dean screams, hurling himself at the rabid angel as though he still has the mark on his arm and can hope to overpower the guy. 

Some part of Cas must be trying to fight it, or else Dean has kept some of that strength after all, because he catches Cas and knocks him to the ground, eyes glazed and dimming.

"You knock it out of him?" Sam asks, cradling his arm as he stands next to Dean.

But the growling is still there, just quieter and broken up. Cas is still a guard-dog gone mad. Dean's just muzzled him for the moment, and it feels awful.

He doesn't feel any better about it once they've bound Cas with lengths of rope and thrown him in the back of the car, hasty sigils scrawled wherever they can get them. Some of that should keep him pinned until they get back to the bunker.

Dean clamps down on the thought that none of this is worth anything, that all he's doing is driving them to a hole in the ground that's proved to be far from safe, so they can wait for creation to be torn apart. With a curse, he puts the Impala in drive and pulls onto the road, the bare, unblemished skin on his forearm a curse all of its own.


	2. Grave

Closing the door of the bunker behind him feels like burying himself in the grave. 

It never used to feel like this, like he’s set some bar across his chances of seeing out his days. The bunker was safety, was sanctuary. The bunker was home. Now, it’s another place where Dean let the darkness crawl up out of his guts and smother some innocent life. Not that the kid was innocent, exactly, but he’d not been tarred with evil, either, had still only been tarnished and not ruined. And he’d begged. He’d pleaded. A younger Dean might have given him a chance. 

A better Dean might have hit Sam on that swing and finished the job.

Instead, all he’s done is let the Darkness crawl up out of the bowels of the nowhere it had been trapped in, ready to smother all life, innocent or not. 

He drowns the memory and the feeling both in whiskey, tipping it burning down his throat in the bleak hope it might sear out the words he said to Cas, the ones he said to Sam. That it might blur out the fact he meant them all. He honestly can’t say if he still does.

Dealing with Cas is not so easy as taking the lid from the bottle and pouring. The angel was awake and snarling when they carried him from the car, and now he’s strapped to the heaviest bed-frame they could find, every sigil and spell they know that might trap an angel to keep him penned, they hope, if he breaks free of the ropes and chains and handcuffs they’ve used to tie him down. 

It’d break Dean’s heart to see the state of the angel, to see the way he fights and strains, if Dean’s heart was still in his chest. He’s pretty sure it, at least, was taken by Death in that restaurant. If not before. Perhaps the Mark burned it out, after all.

He takes the last glass of whiskey down to the dungeon and stands outside the circle, looking in at the one thing that could pull him out of Hell. 

“I’d like to say we’ll get this off you, Cas,” he says, lifting the glass like he’s making a toast at a wedding. “Here’s to screwing it all up, Man. Bet you’re wishing you’d never said you’d bleed for the Winchesters, now.”

Sam’s footsteps are lighter than they should be as he walks to stand beside Dean, like some of him was cut away on the swing of the scythe, after all. 

“Hey,” Sam says, his voice hesitant, “don’t give up, Dean. We’ll get him sorted, all right? We’ll find a way.”

“Like you found a way to fix me?” Dean asks, and he doesn’t even try to keep the bitterness out of his words. “’Cos the cost of that is the whole world, Little Brother. The whole damn world and this angel into the mix. You just had to drag him in, didn’t you? You just couldn’t leave him out of it, give him some fucking peace after everything we’ve put him through.”

“Dean, come on,” Sam says, the hesitancy gone, replaced by something stung. “That’s… We were both in this for you. Cas agreed-”

“Cas would agree to anything to keep from having to watch me murder the world,” Dean breaks in. “He said so himself. And I warned him. I warned him to stay away, that next time I wouldn’t miss. Well, looks like he got to see us both murder the world, didn’t he? And it was a fucking hit this time on him, all right. A-Plus work from the Winchesters. He gets to lie there, trussed up like a rabid Thanksgiving turkey, while the world turns dark around him. Maybe it’ll be a blessing if the spell does kill him first. Maybe we should pray for that, eh? You think Hannah will listen? You think Cas’ little girlfriend will have her ears on?”

“Dean.” His name in Sam’s mouth is a warning. 

Fuck it. Like Sam or Cas or any of them ever listen to Dean’s warnings. Like Dean listens. And isn’t that the prize to beat them all? He doesn’t even listen to his own damn warnings. If he did, he’d have hit Sam and let Death fire him into space.

“What?” he asks, vicious as the Mark ever made him. Perhaps it isn’t really gone. Perhaps it lingers. “You think I’m going to hurt his feelings? Sam, I hate to break it to you, but I damn near killed him. He was bloody and broken on the floor and I was this close to stabbing his own blade through his heart. And part of me still thinks that I should have. At least then he wouldn’t be…be this.”

Sam’s reply is stern, hard, like he can talk sense into his older brother the way a parent scolds sense into a toddler. Like that’s the way round this is, now.

“It’s a spell. That’s all. Cas has come back from being God, from Leviathan, from being dead. He can come back from this. He’ll probably be fine by the time you sober up.”

“I’m not drunk.”

“You aren’t not drunk. And I get it, Dean, I do. You were all built up to…to end it all. To end me. After all these years, you saw a way to stop all of this and you were ready to take it, and now you have to keep fighting. But, Dean, that’s what we do. We fight. And we get knocked down. And we fight some more. And you know why we do it? So other people don’t have to.”

For a few, stretched, tight moments, Dean lets himself be swayed by Sam’s words, by his little brother’s words. By the words of the man whose life he bought with his own soul, whose words convinced him to switch his ‘Yes’ to a ‘No’ to an archangel, who talked him into being uncertain enough that he still isn’t sure if he missed on purpose with the one weapon that could kill Death. 

Then he rejects them.

“We fight because, when we were too young for anyone to be able to make a decision, we were yanked neck deep into this crap and we’ve been swimming in it ever since. And I am sorry, Sammy. I’m sorry I pulled you back into it with me, but we both know it would have swallowed you up again anyway. It was only a matter of time. We were born to end the world. And what do you know? We have. So screw fighting.”

He turns and makes it to the door, the glass nearly empty in his hand, before turning on his heel and raising the glass again, saluting the angel who’s practically foaming at the mouth, like the guy can tell what Dean’s saying. 

“You had it right, Cas, all the way back when. The only thing to do is to drink until the end hits us. What can I say, Buddy. I’m finally hearing you.”

He leaves Sam standing in the dungeon and goes to find another bottle. If he’s shut himself in his grave, he may as well take care of the wake, as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not totally sure where I'm going with it, yet, but feedback is more than welcome. Talk to me, folks. :)


	3. Peach

It’s too quiet. Without the mark pounding in his body, without the beat of it drumming through his bones and into his brain, he’s aware of how little noise there is. Was it always this silent? Or is the whole world holding its breath, not daring to make a noise in case it draws the end closer? Is the whole world hiding, scrunched up small and scared, hoping the monster will miss it, and move on, and devour someone else?

Because that’s what you’re really hoping for, when you cower in the dark, the covers over your head, eyes screwed shut and wishing. Praying. You’re praying it takes the next guy and leaves you alone. Leaves you to open your eyes and find it’s morning.

Dean knows there won’t be a morning. If not tomorrow, then sometime soon. Not much point lying in bed, listening to the silence, when he isn’t going to need his rest. 

The door grates open, juddering as something catches, sending a screech into the still of the night. Dean lets it sing through him, this sound that proves they aren’t dead yet, and shoves until the doorway’s wide open and he’s out on the flat rooftop with the sting of cold air in his lungs. If something’s going to find him, let it come. 

He tried to kill his brother. He didn’t kill his brother. He deserves to die for one of them, and he isn’t sure which one it is.

From up here, he can see the dim lines of trees, of buildings, of power lines. Hard to believe it could all be gone, swallowed up, made into nothing. Even in the nightmare future he was stranded in, way back when Zachariah seemed un-killable, the one where he was the sort of heartless killer he’d been able to tell himself he’d never become, where Cas was out of it and Sam was gone, there were still trees. Still buildings, ruined as they were. Still power lines, even though no power ran through them. The human mind had difficulty catching at nothing.

He wonders whether Cas could get his mind around it, if he wasn’t frothing in the brain. Maybe it’s something angels can do, imagining nothing. 

He sits up on the roof, in the tiny space between the sky and the stars and the dirt he lives under, and watches the darkness seep from the sky. Rosy fingered dawn and all that shit. And it is. Rosy. Peach and crimson and red smear across the bowl of the sky, oils in water, and he stares up as they chase away the night. Something about the way those colours unfurl across the sky reminds him of Cas. 

This might be the last dawn he sees, so he sits and waits until the last furl of peach stains blue, and he stays after that, until the bottle he brought for company is empty and he can’t ignore the press of metal and brick at his back that tells him he still has to go back in there. He has to admit to himself that a cover over his head has never been his lot, and still isn’t, no matter how angry he is, how tired. No matter how much he wants to pull the blanket up and shut his eyes, he knows he can can never just curl in a ball and let the monster move on.

He’s been the monster, and he knows how the blood is warm and bright, no matter whose it is. Sometime still pays. 

It’s foolish, to think he has any chance of reducing this bill, but when the price is all that is, when you’ve killed Death and the world with him, you might as well try.


	4. Box

Sam’s got books stacked around him like a barricade, like just the piling up of knowledge will keep the monster at bay. The Darkness. And what kind of name it that, anyway? 

He supposes he can’t complain it’s cliched. Back when the name was given, it could hardly have been a cliche, whatever language it was given in. 

“What have we got?” he asks and tries not to react to the grateful relief on Sam’s face as he looks up and sees Dean in the doorway. “We got any kind of plan against this thing?”

Sam shakes his head, his lips pinching into a line. He slams a book shut and pushes it aside, on the larger pile.

“Nothing. This is…it’s older than Biblical. I mean, it’s older than anything the Bible talks about, even. Unless we’re taking the first words of Genesis to be a summary of the battle against the Darkness, then…”

“That summary’s even too short for me,” Dean says, and he fakes a smile that fools neither of them. 

“We need something old. Something that goes back to before any sort of writing. Before people or the planet or anything,” Sam says.

Dean sighs and sways into a seat, the whiskey still keeping him company in its own way, softening the edges of this conversation so that he can almost pretend it’s a dream. It’s the sort of thing that should never be real, that’s for sure.

“Yeah, well. Not sure we’ve got anything like that hanging around,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face and closing his eyes. Sitting up all night isn’t as easy on the body as it was when he was young. Not like he got a lot of sleep with the Mark in him, and every fiber of his being is clamouring he needs to pay that bill, too. It’ll have to wait, though. The other stuff needs paying, first. If there’s still a world, still a Dean, then he’ll pay the rest of what he owes later.

His brother’s voice brings his eyes back open. Sam sounds regretful, but there’s that note in there that says he sees a path and intends to take it.

“We do have one thing,” he says. The pause is just long enough that Dean has time to look down and see the book Sam has in front of him now. A book written in Enochian. “We have an angel.”

“He didn’t know about the Mark being a key, Sam. Come on. He’d have said. He said it was old. That it might be from back before the lore. That was it.” Dean bristles as Sam’s look gets this light in it that says Dean’s missing the point. “And anyway, he’s not exactly in a fit state to have a chat about his childhood. You go in and ask him anything now and he’ll try to take your head off.”

Sam winces, and Dean shakes his head. No point apologising. Sam’s head would have saved the world. Well, if Dean had known to call Cas and stop him from casting the spell, so maybe it makes no difference, after all. He’d have watched his brother die at his hand and still helped to plunge the whole world into night. 

No. Not night. The night has stars and a dawn to follow it. 

“I didn’t say he remembered it, Dean,” Sam says. “You know he had his head messed around with. The way he told it, all the angels did. Who’s to say any of them know what memories they have? But there are ways to get inside an angel’s mind without them having any part in it. We just need someone who knows how.”

It takes Dean a minute, and he doesn’t know why it takes him as long as it does, or why he’s drenched in cold from the inside out when he gets it. It’s not like it’s the first time for any of them, but this…

“Crowley? You want to set Crowley digging about in Cas’ head? What, like Cas is…is an old box we need sorting out? Are you serious?”

It’s hard to stay in his seat. Only a day ago, he’d have lunged upright, swept everything off the table, smashed it all up. Or he might not have cared about handing Crowley permission to tear into Cas like the guy was nothing but a malfunctioning computer. Hard to say. Either way, the whiskey and tiredness and the bleak knowledge of reality conspire to keep him where he is, staring at his brother in something that wants to be horror, that wants to be disgust. All it’s really managing to be is weariness.

“It’s the only way I can think of, Dean. I’ve looked, and I can’t find any way to break this spell. I’m not even sure what it is, really. And I’ve tried tracking Rowena, to make her lift it, and that’s a no go. She’s off the grid. But Crowley? You know as well as I do that Crowley is always out for Crowley, and he doesn’t want the world to end. If this gives us even a chance to dig back and find out how to stop it, we have to try.”

“And what if digging back does mean we find something, but it destroys Cas? What if Crowley hollows him out, Sam?”

Sam’s expression is set. It sends the first pulse of real terror through Dean.

“Then we let him, and we mourn Cas when it’s done.”


	5. Suit

They take what they need to the dungeon. Crowley’s been in the bunker even when they haven’t invited him, and the Stynes walked right in. Whatever protection the place once had seems to have withered and died. As for summoning his right to Cas’ side… Might as well let Crowley see what he’s dealing with, after all. Not like Cas is in a state to worry about dignity. Dean feels like insects are skittering under his skin, but he tells himself to get over it. To deal. He’s gone way past the point where he can claim the moral high ground, and Sam’s right. They need to do this. Not like one angel is worth more than the possibility of saving the world.

He tells himself that over and over, as Sam sets up the spell and chants the words. The match flares and drops.

Crowley doesn’t appear.

“You do that right?”

Sam doesn’t even bother replying.

The second time, they get a reply. A woman in a dark suit appears, her skin putting Dean in mind of Kali, a red belt the only spot of colour, and tilts her head in a way that makes Dean dart his eyes to Cas. She sneers when he looks back, a sneer that twists into a smile like a garrote. 

“You rang?” she asks, her voice a purr with the claws barely hidden. 

“We didn’t call for you,” Sam says, his voice flat. “Where’s Crowley?”

She lifts an eyebrow, the line of it dark and arcing.

“Crowley who you tried to kill, Sam?” she asks. “Crowley who you left with that excuse for a Seraph, to be attacked and mauled like a common rat? You need to keep your pets on their leads, Moose.”

Dean scowls, way past having any time for this crap.

“Where’d you pick up the new suit?” he asks, refusing to give Crowley the satisfaction of looking surprised. “Looks designer.”

“Oh, she is,” Crowley says, running a hand down his new side and along his hips. “Sleek little model. All the mod cons. What can I say? It was time for an upgrade.”

“What did Cas do to your old one?” Dean asks, and much though he wishes Cas had been standing by the side of that road sound of mind and ready to help them dig their way out of this latest pit, the idea of Crowley being torn to shreds is a comfort. It occurs to him he should wonder about the poor schmuck who was stuck in there all these years, but that guy probably died ages ago, and as for the woman Crowley has now… There are bigger issues here. Hell, they’re about to ask the King of Hell to rip into the mind of the only being, no matter what species, who’s ever said he’d be by Dean’s side forever. 

Then again, ‘forever’ is looking to be pretty short these days. And Cas has always been about saving the day. Or Dean, at any rate. The fact Dean’s pretty sure Cas would agree to this if he had any say twists something right in Dean’s gut, makes him feel he might splatter all that whiskey at Crowley’s feet. He doesn’t.

Crowley hasn’t answered Dean’s last question, waving a hand as though that’s all the reply they need to that one, but he shudders as he does it. Instead of speaking, he turns and looks down at Cas, who hisses and snarls with renewed fury, managing to rock the bed, no matter how sturdy it is. 

“Quite the little terrier, isn’t he?” Crowley says. “I assume you called me here to help you put him down. Some owners can be terribly…sentimental about their dogs.”

“No,” Sam says, before Dean can get any words out himself. “We want you to do something to help us all. You included. Don’t worry. It’s in your wheelhouse.”

“You want me to take the spell off him, then?” Crowley asks, pointing at Cas with his thumb, that eyebrow rising again in elegant disdain. Dean’s got to admit, it’s a disturbingly good look on the new Crowley. “Because that might take some doing. Mother dearest has her little ways.”

“No,” Sam says, and he doesn’t so much as glance at Dean. This is not the plan. They agreed to tell Crowley they wanted Cas cured, first, so they could at least ask if Cas knew anything rather than going straight for assaulting his mind. “We need to know about something from back before the records. The Darkness. You heard of it?”

Crowley pauses, narrows his eyes, shakes his head.

“No. Can’t say that I have. Sounds like something little Goth children like to chat about.”

“Yeah. Not so much,” Sam says, and Dean can only stand and let him get on with it. If they show any cracks in their front to Crowley, they won’t get anything to played, but he wants to be seething inside. Wants to be. Can’t quite summon it. Maybe it is best is Cas doesn’t know what’s happening. Maybe it’s easier if Dean doesn’t have to see the angel lie down and bare his throat, so to speak. “We need you to dig into Cas’ head. See if there’s something in there about it. Something buried.”

This time, Crowley looks right at Dean, like he’s just waiting for some explosion. When seconds tick by with nothing, the demon grins.

“What’s up, Squirrel? The honeymoon over? You and lover boy have a little tiff, decide to call it a day? Tell me, who gets custody of Moose?”

“Just tell us if you can do it, Crowley,” Dean growls, and for a moment his voice harmonises with Cas’ incoherent noises, like the two of them are animals on the hunt together. Dean doesn’t look. He doesn’t need to spend any more time seeing his friend reduced to that. 

Crowley’s grin grows wider, wide enough to swallow them all. 

“Dean,” he says. “It will be my absolute pleasure.”


	6. Metal

They tighten the straps, add more, until Cas can barely move. He tries. He tries to bite Dean when a hand strays too close, and Crowley’s laughter rings through the room in a way that’s a kind of torture all by itself.

“You see, Dean,” the demon says, his good humour an offense to all that should be good in the world, “I told you to train him properly. Should have hit him with the rolled up newspaper more often.”

Dean grits his teeth at the mention of hitting Cas. They cleaned him up as soon as they got him fastened to the bed, but blood keeps seeping from the angel’s eyes, tears of blood that just make the blue of Cas’ eyes more startling. It shouldn’t look so beautiful, and Dean refuses to dwell on that. 

“Just get on with it,” he says, something he must have said at least ten times since they told Crowley what they wanted. Those insects under his skin are burrowing right down into his flesh, now, heading for where his heart should be. He wants to rip his own skin off and pluck them out. He wishes he could persuade himself the things were real. Then, maybe he could make himself do it. Without the Mark, it would kill him, but at least he wouldn’t have to watch what Crowley is about to do to Cas.

The demon has fetched spurs of metal, lances to push into the bone around Cas’ brain. Dean’s never understood how an angel’s body maps onto the body of its vessel. Then again, he’s never really understood a lot about Cas. When he’ll leave and when he’ll stick around no matter what…those are things that follow rules Dean has never worked out.

As Crowley lines up the first lance with delicate, manicured fingers, the nails painted a deep, shining crimson, Dean wishes Cas would rediscover the use of his wings and fly away. He has to clench his hands into fists, let his own nails dig crescents in his hands, to stop himself from shouting at Crowley to stop. 

It was awful when he was watching this happen to Sam, but at least with Sam that was to save him. Not this. Even if they get what they need and save the world, something so out there that Dean can’t let himself hope for it, they still can’t pretend they’re doing this to save Cas. Not really. Crowley even said, before he left to get his stuff, a look on his face that said he wouldn’t be held responsible if they ignored this warning, that, digging as deep through the angel re-programming as they might need to, there is every chance there’ll be nothing left of Cas but a drooling mess when they’re finished. Sam spoke with a steady voice when he said to go ahead anyway. Dean turned away and stared at the wall. 

The bite of the sharp point on the metal pushes at the skin on Cas’ brow, pressing it down, an indentation above his right eyes that gives, splits, as Crowley pushes the point forwards, as he digs it in. 

There is just the slow, near-silent slide of that spear set beside Cas’ anger and ceaseless sound. 

Then Cas’ eyes widen, the blood around them, leaking from them, a parody of some warrior’s war-paint, and the angel draws in breath enough to bellow through the bunker.

He uses it to scream.

For the first time in the day since they found him, Cas isn’t growling, isn’t snarling or hissing or anything else, but screaming. 

Dean almost turns away, almost gets up and leaves the room, but Sam has a set look on his face that says he’ll let Crowley do anything to get what they need, and Dean can’t shake the feeling that if he walks out he’ll come back to find Cas dead, the scorched marks of wings draping across the bed, along the floor.

He doesn’t even know if Cas still has wings. 

The screams are ear-splitting, the edges of them ragged and broken. Cas tries to arch of the bed, his back lifting and curving, but the restraints are too tight, too thickly wound about him, and he barely leaves the mattress. 

When that first metal rod is in, Crowley sits back, letting go of the metal as Cas’ scream abruptly shuts off, the angel’s eyes shutting and his head lolling to the side. 

Crowley smiles and pats Cas’ cheek, his expression predatory.

“Not how I’d have liked to make you scream in bed, Angel,” he says, and Dean has to force himself not to stalk over there and tear Crowley away, “but it’ll do.”

With Cas out cold, the next spears go in quietly, the sounds faint and all the more horrible for barely being there at all. It’s as Crowley has the last one in and is adjusting something that Dean notices the thin sliver of blue. Cas is awake. Awake and not snarling, his gaze, only partly conscious as it seems to be, fixed on Dean.

“Cas?” he asks, his knees striking the floor harder than he means to as he kneels beside the bed. “Cas, that you? Can you hear me?”

He gets no response, but he feels like Cas can hear him, can see him. He hopes he’s wrong. If Cas can see Dean, if he’s come back to himself enough for that, then he can feel what they’re doing to him, as well. He knows that he’s strapped to the bed with Crowley’s angel-tuning devices in his skull.

A memory Dean wishes he didn’t have swarms up from the depths, something Dean shoved away and down almost as soon as it happened, convincing himself it wasn’t anything he could help, that Cas would move past it and be better off out of the race. A night in a motel in that nothing-town Cas had ended up in, with the then-human Cas holding his arm carefully as Dean told him it’d heal, that he’d have to get used to human healing, and throwing Cas a beer like it would solve all his ills. Cas nursing that one beer for hours, words sputtering out of him every now and then even though Dean tried to get him to settle. Cas telling Dean how Metatron had strapped him down and cut his throat, cut out his grace. Cas sharing, in a quiet, ashamed voice, his fear that stalked him in the night, made him live that moment over and over. Dean telling Cas nothing like it would ever happen again. 

He wonders which one Cas will think is worse, which one he’ll relive most often. If there’s any of him left to relive it at all. 

Ignoring Dean and Cas both, Crowley fiddles with a few more of the metal spurs, taps a finger against one and tuts. 

“Always playing hard to get, aren’t you, Cas?” he asks, and Dean wants to scrub at himself and at Cas, to get Crowley’s oily, stinking words off their skin. 

“What’s wrong?” Sam asks, as though it’s just some normal ritual they’re doing and not trying to scoop out the inside of their best friend’s head. “Why aren’t we getting anything? Does it normally take this long?”

“No,” Crowley snaps, the purring, petting innuendo slithering away like shedding skin. “If you must know, there’s a little trouble getting it up, so to speak. Cas here is a hard nut to crack. Almost…”

His voice trails off as he makes minute changes to whatever it is that the metal rods do, and Dean hisses and falls back onto his ass as the lights spark and waver.

When they steady, Crowley has Cas’ head between his hands, the nails digging into Cas’ cheeks. Cas is muttering something, low and steady, and Dean crawls back upright and joins Crowley and his brother in leaning close to hear what the angel’s saying. 

It’s not English, but it doesn’t sound much like Enochian, either.

“What is that?” he asks, when Cas has repeated the strings of sound more than once. “Can you understand it?”

“No,” Crowley says, and the edge of irritation is warning enough that they aren’t finished here. They don’t have what they need yet. “It’s some language I’ve never heard. Which means it isn’t human and humans have never heard it.”

“Enochian isn’t human,” Sam points out.

Crowley sneers.

“Humans have it written down. Some angel spilled the secrets long before you were ever a gleam in your useless daddy’s eye. This…this must be something Heaven kept under wraps.”

Dean shares a look with Sam, and his brother isn’t so shut down and focused that Dean can’t read the confusion there.

“Cas speaks another angel language?” Dean asks. “He never mentioned it.”

“Isn’t your little theory that Naomi and her sharp suits sliced and diced his brain?” Crowley asks, his tongue seeming to relish each word, like the idea of Cas’ mind being chopped up and sorted brings him endless delight. “Who’s to say he even knew. After all, what this little angel-delight admits to knowing is precious little even when he isn’t lying.”

Sam stands, huffing in a way that says he’s a gnat’s whisker from smashing Crowley, and chops his hand through the air.

“Work it out,” he says. “We need to know if we have any useful intel, here.”

Buried only just under the surface of those words is the message that if there’s nothing of use, they need to know it’s a waste so they can move on. For a moment, Dean sees Cas thrown on that pile again, the one he hurled the angel on to, only this time he sees it set on fire. 

“Hold you over-tall horses,” Crowley says, and he reaches out to the metal lances again, twisting and tapping as Cas keeps up the steady stream of what could well be nonsense, his eyes still fixed on Dean. “Let’s see if we can change the language settings.”

A final twist of one spear widens Cas’ eyes again, has his whole body stiffen and spasm, and for longer than he can just shake off Dean thinks this is it, Cas is dying. But it passes, the angel’s body slumping and his eyes fixing on a point on the ceiling. The chanting, when it starts again, is Enochian. 

“Well, that was a fun little interlude,” Crowley says, and leans in as though he can’t hear Cas well enough from a foot or two away. 

A few minutes later, he sits back and looks down at Cas like he’s seen his pet dog pull off a good trick. 

“Turns out we might have what you need right here, after all,” he says. 

“What?” Sam asks, dropping to a crouch again next to Dean and peering at Cas as though he’ll find an English translation written on their friend’s skin. “What’s he saying?”

“Enough for me to know the next step,” Crowley says, his new face bizarrely like his old one, for all it’s superficially nothing alike, and Dean can’t ignore it, that thread of humour and smugness in the demon’s voice. Whatever this is, it’s no good for Cas. Crowley never sounds this happy when something’s good for Cas.

“What next step?” Dean asks, the cold certainty that they’ll take it already firmly settled in his mind, in his lungs, in the hollow where his heart was. 

Crowley shrugs and raises his hands, as though to remind them this is not on him. Don’t shoot the messenger.

“We need to reboot him,” he says. “Reinstall some old software.”

“You what?” Dean asks. 

Sam, though, seems to have caught on, his expression saying he’s worked it out.

“You know how to do that?” At Dean’s grunt of frustration, Sam goes on, glancing at his brother. “We need to pull up a version of Cas from before he got a load of stuff wiped. But how do we do that?”

“Wait,” Dean says. “An older version? Like, not the one we know? What’ll happen to our Cas?”

“Dean,” Sam says, and that’s the tone he uses when he’s needing Dean to get with the program, “we don’t have time to worry about that. It’s not like our Cas is here now, anyway.” He turns to Crowley again. “How do we do it?”

Crowley shrugs again and reaches into his jacket. “Like I said,” he says, pulling a thin, silver blade from his jacket, “we need a reboot. Bit crude, but I don’t have access to Naomi’s more elegant equipment.”

Sam grabs Dean as Crowley moves, plunging the blade down right through Cas’ eye.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm enjoying this way too much.


	7. Ice

Cas seizes. 

Light spills out around the blade in his eye, coating the room in a brilliance it doesn’t deserve. It builds, and it builds, and it builds, as Dean struggles in Sam’s arms, almost throwing his brother off, knowing there’s nothing he can do now anyway.

There are no wings. 

When the light fades, when Dean can stop squinting and his eyes stop feeling like they’re being melted, there are no wings. 

“Is… What did you do?” he demands. 

“Calm down, Love,” Crowley drawls. “Your little pet’s still with us. Take a proper look before you jump right back into the threats.”

Dean pulls away from Sam, who lets him go now that there’s nothing to be done, and half-crawls, have falls to the bed, catching himself on the edge just before he bashes his chin on the frame. It takes a long moment for his brain to catch up to what he’s seeing, to register the blue glow in the angel’s open eyes.

They aren’t looking at Dean, though. Not this time. This time they are distant and star-filled. This time they seem to be looking beyond. 

“Cas?” he asks, because Cas has always come back to him. Always left, too, and he mustn’t forget that, but he’s always come back in some form or another. “Cas, that you in there? You want to give me some sign you can hear me?”

The eyes shift, focus, latch onto Dean, and he feels like he’s falling. Feels like he’s been sucked into an abyss deeper and more total than the endless pounding horror of Hell. Terror blossoms in his chest, and maybe he still has a heart after all, because it’s beating painfully, like it wants to escape.

“Cas?” he manages, but it’s wispy and ragged, the tail end of a name that seems to mean nothing in the face of that gaze.

His eyes still locked on Dean, Cas…shifts, and the straps and ropes and chains are gone. 

Dean feels Sam’s hands on his shoulders, tugging him back, and he scrabbles away and up to his feet as Cas swings himself upright, precise and direct, with none of the extraneous movements he’s picked up over the years. Anything human has been washed away and Dean is staring right at an angel, aware of the fact in a way he hasn’t been for years, not when it comes to this particular example. 

His face totally blank, Cas looks away and down, looks at his right hand, which flexes like someone settling a glove along the fingers. 

When he looks back, his eyes are almost their normal shade, but some of that deeper, brighter, more intense colour lingers, a stain telling Dean that the friend he had is…maybe not gone. He has to hope he’s not gone. But he’s certainly not here right now.

Cas speaks, and his voice is deep and echoing. He speaks in that same strange tongue as before, certain and cold, as though any who hear him should understand and obey.

“Sorry, Angel-cake,” Crowley says, and Dean almost can’t hear the tremour in it, almost can ignore the way the demon’s backed himself and his well-dressed body up against the wall to the right. “Nobody here but us chickens, and none of us chickens speak…whatever that is. Try updating the software.”

Cas doesn’t turn to look at Crowley, but he pauses, tilting his head in a way that clenches at something in Dean, something painful and pulsing and hurt. He looks to be considering, as far as anything can be read on that face. 

Finally, he speaks again, this time in English.

“Michael-Sword,” he states, and there is something of stars and emptiness and cold fire in his voice. “Why have you summoned me?”

“Mic…? No. Cas. It’s me. It’s Dean,” he tries, but he sees the angel reject his words, sees how they scatter away without acceptance. “Come on,” he says. “You gotta remember me, Man. Don’t do this.”

Sam moves next to him, drawing Cas’ attention, and speaks over the last of Dean’s plea.

“Who am I?” he asks, his face stone.

Castiel regards Sam, and Dean hears his brother’s breath hitch when the Seraph first looks at him. He wonders if Sam feels the same thing he did, that knowledge that one false step will send him spiralling into eternity with nothing to grab hold of. This Cas isn’t their friend, isn’t a being who’s turned against Heaven to fight for free will, who’s fallen and been human and been battered into something Dean can call family. This is a piece of space itself, burning ice in front of them.

“You are the Sword of the Morningstar,” Castiel says, a pronouncement. “A sword already picked up but not wielded. Why have you summoned me?”

Sam firms, drawing even taller, any hurt at Cas’ words hidden.

“We need to know about the Darkness. We need to know a way to fight it. To defeat it.”

“What has happened to the Lock?” Castiel asks. “What has happened to the Lightbringer?”

Dean glances at Crowley, whose eyebrows are crawling up his skull. 

“Just how far back have you pulled this version from?” he asks. 

Crowley shakes his head, his long hair swinging. 

“By the sounds of it,” he says, “all the way back to the beginning. Back before Earth or demons or the Fall. A long way before Cain. We might be looking at original flavour Cas, here, boys. Quite the fascinating turn of events, wouldn’t you say? Be interesting to see how he holds up.”

“What do you mean?” Dean asks, as Castiel looks away from all of them and seems to be turning his attention to something Dean can’t see, maybe something outside the room. 

Crowley laughs, and it’s far from amused.

“You can’t see it, can you? He’s still only got that fraction of Grace. Nothing like he used to have. But his trueform… Oh. That’s changed. Little Cas here turns out not to be so little, after all. He’s…blossomed, shall we say. Must have been keeping himself all tucked up small all these years, but now he’s forgotten to do that.”

“What?”

Sam shrugs when Dean looks at him, apparently not following any better than Dean is.

Castiel, still focused on something else, offers an answer.

“I do not have enough Grace to sustain my form,” he says. “One set of my wings is damaged almost beyond repair. Whatever you have done to bring me here, most of me has been torn away. To fight the Darkness, I need to be whole.”

“What? But..you said you had enough. Where are we gonna get you more Grace? I thought you said you wouldn’t gank another angel,” Dean says. He leaves off the ‘not again’. This Cas doesn’t remember Dean, or what’s happened to him. 

“We must find God,” Cas says, “or an archangel.”

“Yeah, well. Bit of a problem, there,” Dean tries, his mind spinning. 

Cas looks at him again and any more words dry up.

“We need to find God or an archangel,” he states, and it’s not a suggestion. “Only God or an archangel can repair another archangel.”


	8. Sway

“Cas, you ain’t an archangel,” Dean says, and even he can hear the flat denial in his voice.

It doesn’t seem that Castiel can hear him. His gaze has drifted and he seems to be having trouble focusing, the glow in his eyes dimming and flaring. When his iron-straight back slumps, just for a second, Crowley waves a hand as though everything he has ever said has just been confirmed.

“See, boys,” he says. “What did I tell you? Hasn’t got enough poke.”

“Shut up, Crowley,” Dean orders, and the thought passes through his head, fleeting and thin, that they should trap the damn King of Hell right now, while he’s down here in the dungeon. That new body isn’t fooling Dean into thinking Crowley’s any less dangerous than he was. If anything, the guy seems worse, feral and strong, more the old Crowley than he’s been since Sam had him in that church.

“Why?” Crowley is clearly not going to let Dean take the lead. He pushes himself away from the wall, stalking towards Cas where the angel sways, his eyes dimming more and more. 

Or archangel. Hard to believe that when Cas has shifted from something expansive and dense and endless to looking like he’s about to pitch over onto his face.

Dean moves just before the angel crumples, catching him and easing him back onto the bed as Sam and Crowley watch, drawing closer but making no move to help. Cas looks groggy, half out of it, but he’s still conscious. Dean heaves him up so that the angel’s head is on the pillow, and watches as his friend gasps, drawing in breath as though he’s been without oxygen for long enough to starve his brain. Dean can’t remember Cas breathing in any noticeable way the whole time he was spouting off about archangels and swords. Now, the guy looks panicked, action returning to his face as his eyes dart about and his mouth opens to suck in more air. He looks like he wants to speak but can’t get the words together.

“Hey. Hey, just give it a minute,” Dean says, running a soothing hand over Cas’ shoulder, up into his hair. He needs his friend to settle, to calm down, before he gets frantic enough to hurt himself more than the last few days have already managed. 

Slowly, Cas calms, the desperate edge to his breathing smoothing out, his eyes stopping in their ceaseless movement. Dean keeps stroking Cas’ hair back from his forehead, and he can’t pretend it’s anything else. Some part of him needs to do this, needs to use a gentle touch where just a matter of days ago he used his fists. It seems to be helping, to be bringing Cas back from wherever the attack dog spell and Crowley’s ministrations took him. Maybe he’ll come round enough to tell them what he remembers soon. 

Cas finally, finally looks at Dean, his expression still not focused to start with.

“Hey there,” Dean says. “You with us?”

A faint crinkling of his brow shows that Cas isn’t completely okay. Perhaps he’s confused as to how he got here. Must be a mind-fuck, going from whatever was happening with Rowena to this: Cas flat on his back; Dean without the Mark; Crowley in a woman’s body. Only Sam’s in the same state he was in. 

They stay that way, Dean staring down at Cas and Cas staring up at Dean, Dean still stroking his hand steadily and lightly through Cas’ hair, in a way he hasn’t done with anyone since he was with Lisa. It seems they hang in the balance, a sense things could go either way surrounding them, before Cas’ eyes swivel up, to the side, tracking Dean’s movements, and then the angel flinches. 

Cas pulls away sharply, moving backwards at such a speed that Dean finds himself sitting with his hand held aloft, reaching at nothing, and Cas goes right off the bed and rolls to land on his feet on the other side, backing up until he’s feet away with his hands part up, defensive. 

He doesn’t look properly at Dean now, darting glances at him as though Dean is too bright to look at, or too horrific. 

“Dean,” he says, his voice deep and gruff, so much more something of the earth than the voice spilling from him so recently, when he stood upright and distant right in front of Dean and didn’t see him. Not really. Now, it looks like he sees Dean all too well and wishes he were looking at anything else. 

After that one name, Cas seems to have run out of words. He stands apart from them, from Sam and from Dean and from the demon they’ve drafted in to help.

Sam looks at Dean’s hand and frowns, his attention moving quickly on to Cas. 

“What do you know about the Darkness?” he asks, like it isn’t clear Cas is keeping away from Dean. 

“The what?” Cas sounds like only part of his mind is on this. He also sounds like he’s never heard the name before. “What happened with… The spell… It worked?”

He still won’t look directly at Dean, but he’s got his own Grace. Surely he can tell the Mark is gone. 

“Yeah, Cas, it worked,” Sam says, and there’s no need for the snap of impatience in his voice. It’s not Cas’ fault that he’s been out of it. At least, not any more than it was ever Cas’ fault, exactly, getting caught up in spells and in curses and in trying to do what would save Dean. “And Crowley here hacked into your long-term storage and five minutes ago you knew about the Darkness, so what gives? You’ve got to know something.”

“Crowley…?” Cas takes a deep breath, another one, as though the habit of breathing is one he can’t shake after his time being human. “Crowley did what?”

He’s looking at the floor now, at a spot between him and the bed, between him and the brothers. He looks like he wants to back away further, to turn and leave. 

“Crowley dug around in your head,” Dean breaks in, and he has to wonder where all the metal rods ran off to. Archangel Cas must have vanished them, because there hasn’t been any sign of them since that light spilling out of Cas’ eyes. “And you started talking some shit in a language even our King of Hell here doesn’t know, something no human’s ever heard.”

“So I stabbed you in the eye,” Crowley offers, as though he’s helping. 

“You-” Cas snaps his mouth shut around the end of the word and glares at Crowley, who waves even as he backs away. It doesn’t seem to slow Cas down at all that Crowley’s wearing a woman who looks like she just stepped out of a top end fashion designer’s studio. Maybe he doesn’t see the difference. “Why would you do that?” Cas growls.

Dean finds himself checking for blood in Cas’ eyes, but there’s no sign the spell is back. Not that one. Whatever reboot Crowley managed seems to have wiped it away. 

Right now, Crowley is back to standing by the far wall, subtlety placing himself as far from Cas as he can get without outright running for it, and Dean has to wonder if the demon thinks he’s fooling anyone. He can practically smell the stink of fear rolling off Crowley, but it isn’t something someone would guess easily from his words.

“I switched channels to Enochian first, Cas my friend, my buddy, my erstwhile former ally, and you know what you told me? In case of fire, break glass. Re-initiate old programming. More or less. So I did. And weren’t we surprised. Eh, Dean?”

At that, Cas looks at Dean, a look that has so many layers to it Dean doesn’t even try to work them out. There’s hurt there, though, and confusion, and still something of that bond they’ve had for years. Have had and tested and pushed to breaking time and time again. He can’t shake the feeling that this might be the one that’s done it. 

Above all else is a clear demand for an answer, for someone to fill in the gaps.

“You said to fight the Darkness, we need God or the archangels. And…” Dean looks at Sam, but his brother is fixed on Cas and is giving nothing away. He sighs and goes on. “And you said you were an archangel. Then…then you collapsed and…” 

Dean waves a hand to say that’s all he has. 

Cas shakes his head, and doesn’t stop shaking it, the movement making its way down his body in a way that screams a warning, and this time it’s Sam who makes it across the room before the angel collapses.

“No,” Cas says, pushing at Sam with one hand, his fingers splayed across Sam’s chest. It should look ridiculous, someone with Cas’ size and build trying to push Sam away, but Dean knows Sam ought to be getting pushed back. He isn’t. 

“Cas,” Sam says, more gruffly than he’s spoken to the angel in Dean’s presence in a good long while, if ever. Speaking to Cas like he’s an annoyance, like he’s dirt, when he isn’t giving the Winchesters what they want right when they want it is normally Dean’s thing. “You can barely stand. You don’t remember what we need to know. Just stay down. Maybe you’ll remember something when your head’s not messed up.”

And Sam scoops Cas up and lifts him back onto the bed, holding him down when he tries to sit up, to get up.

Dean moves to help Sam, or Cas, he isn’t sure who, but his friend judders away from him and he falls back, letting Sam and his huge hands press Cas back into the mattress.

“Look,” Dean says, adding his voice instead of his hands. “Sam’s right. You’ve been through a lot and we need to see if you remember anything when you aren’t so…so…tired. Okay? Just rest. Or whatever it is you need to do to heal. We’ll talk later, see what you know.”

Cas is clearly fading, is clearly not completely conscious anymore, but he won’t stay still, either. Keeps trying to get up. With a grunt that says Sam’s had enough, he pulls one of the straps out from under Cas.

“What are you doing?” Dean asks. “He’s not attack dog anymore. He doesn’t need those.”

“He needs to stay still and rest,” Sam says, already fastening one of Cas’ arms down. “This will make him. If he doesn’t remember anything, we need to keep looking for other answers. I don’t have time to sit and stroke his head all night to keep him calm.” 

The look he shoots Dean says the gentle soothing earlier has been noted. 

Dean rolls his eyes and, when it’s obvious Sam is doing this no matter what Dean says, he leans down and helps his brother strap Cas in. They don’t bother with all of the chains this time. Cas seems weak, now, almost at human strength, and it should only take the straps to keep him in bed for a while.

When it’s done, Sam straightens up and catches Crowley’s eye.

“Can you reboot him again?” he asks.

“Sam-” Dean gets out, before a hand held up in front of his face stops him.

“Can you?” Sam asks again.

Crowley stares at the angel on the bed for a spell, and shakes his head.

“No. That was your lot. The rebooting’s been done, Moose. It could just be needing a warm up before it takes properly. You’ll have to wait and see.”

“Great.”

Without even looking down at Cas again, Sam leaves the room, and moments later Crowley pushes away from the wall and walks over to stand near Dean.

“Well, I won’t say it’s been fun, but I’ve a mother to hunt and Hell to ready. If this Darkness is as bad as you boys suggest, here’s hoping your precious Cas wakes up as scary, shiny archangel Cas, eh?”

And with that, Crowley is gone, leaving Dean to piece together what’s just happened. Cas is their only lead, and it looks like they have to hope that some of his rebooted memories swim back up as he sleeps. Dean looks to the door and considers following Sam. 

With a sigh, he sinks back down to the bed and reaches out for Cas’ hair. With no idea when, or if, the guy’ll wake up, someone really should stay and keep an eye on things. The angel’s hair is soft under Dean’s hand, and he refuses to think about why he’s doing this. There’s already too much to think about as it is.


	9. Love

Dean is half-dozing, sitting on the floor with his back against the bed-frame, when he hears Cas wake up. Feels it, too. The tremour through the frame comes at the same time as the gasp, and Dean is on his knees and leaning over Cas in moments. Panicked eyes meet his as Cas flinches back from Dean, as far as he can with those straps. 

Not archangel Cas, then. 

“Hang on, Cas,” Dean says, reaching for the first strap and pausing only for a beat when Cas tenses. “I’m just gonna undo these. That’s all.”

As soon as the last strap is undone, Cas skitters back until he’s got his back against the headboard, his legs pulled up and one wrist cradled in his other hand. Did Sam fasten that strap too tight? Dean thinks about taking Cas’ arm to check, but the angel’s curled in on himself in a way Dean’s rarely seen. He looks wary. Like he’s ready to run but doesn’t think he’ll get the chance. 

“Why was I tied down?” Cas asks, his voice only half its usual volume. He’s back to not looking directly at Dean.

“You were agitated and you needed to sleep. That’s all. It was to keep you from hurting yourself.” At Cas’ silence, Dean tries again. “And…Rowena used her attack dog spell on you. We needed to be sure it was gone.”

“Attack dog spell?” Cas seems to be having to fight each word out of his mouth. “So, it was for your safety.”

“Yeah. No. I mean… Look, the straps are off now, okay?”

“For how long?”

That brings Dean up short. What exactly does Cas think is going on here? He gapes at the angel, wishing Cas didn’t look so defeated, so hurt. It’s all too easy to switch from this Cas to the one lying on the floor smeared in his own blood, his own blade planted in a book by his head. It’s unfair, how easy that is. 

“What?” Dean asks, knowing he’s stalling, knowing he has to have some semblance of this conversation, at some point. 

After years of brushing it aside and moving on, the barest, token talk to tide them over to the next battle, it’s reached the point where Cas doesn’t trust him. Is scared of him. It’s written in every line of the angel’s body, in the way his head’s lowered and his shoulders are hunched. Maybe it’s just that he’s never managed to hurt Cas before. Not physically. Or maybe leaving him on the floor has broken something in what passes for an angel’s heart. 

“How long before you tie me down again?” Cas asks, a hitch in his otherwise near-dead tone. He frowns, a tiny movement. “Before Sam does?”

Understanding dawns. It isn’t just waking up with the straps on.

“We thought you were out of it.” Dean says, like that justifies anything.

“Sam asked Crowley to reboot me again,” Cas goes on, as though Dean hasn’t said anything. Maybe he’s really only talking to himself, working through the horror. “I told you, years ago, that I was not a hammer.” He pauses again, takes a breath which is far from steady. If Dean didn’t know better, he’d say Cas is fighting not to cry. “So many have told me, other angels, demons even, that I am nothing more to you than… But I thought… And then the Mark, but you seemed to need me, still, and Sam… Sam…” 

Cas stutters to a halt, his deep voice struggling over the words until they peter out, and Dean waits. He doesn’t want to, wants to leave or break in or, hell, start an argument. Anything. But he’s caught in amber, here, his mind a complete blank of grey shock. Cas has an ocean of pain in him, it seems, and he sounds to be drowning in it. Dean finds he has nothing to offer to pull him to shore.

“Sam,” Cas starts up again, as though his brain has unfrozen, “called me his friend. He showed affection, and…I thought… But he would tie me down, after what Metatron did, he would tie me down, and… and…”

His eyes are moving, now, darting about as though some escape hatch will open and let him out of what he’s feeling. Unless he really does think he’s in physical danger, that Dean’s just waiting to pounce and hold him down and stick one of Crowley’s daggers through his eye.

Dean wishes he could tell himself Cas’ fears are completely unfounded. 

At least there’s something he can think to say now, though it paints him in colours he’s only now realising are ugly and cruel.

“Sam doesn’t know exactly what Metatron did,” he says. “I never told him. It…” He doesn’t want to look at Cas as he says it, but he makes himself. He can do that, at least. “It didn’t seem important.”

Of course, looking means having to see. He sees Cas freeze up at that, at that admission that his pain, his trauma, wasn’t something Dean gave weight to. Doesn’t give weight to. After all, Dean helped Sam to fasten the straps, even with the attack dog spell gone. He didn’t stop Sam from asking Crowley about rebooting. 

“Listen, Cas… You attacked us. You attacked both of us when we found you. You weren’t yourself, and then when Crowley got through to you, you still weren’t yourself. Archangel, remember? Wait, do you remember? Like, anything?”

The frown grows. 

“No,” Cas says slowly, searchingly. “I was with Crowley and Rowena. And then I was here. She killed the only thing she ever loved.” He stops, as though he’s marveling at that, and shakes his head, still shut in on himself. His next words are close to a whisper. “I don’t know how she could do that if she really loved him.”

“Cas,” Dean says, shifting to sit on the mattress. He stops halfway when Cas tenses, one hand out. “Hey. Hey, I’ll just sit on the edge. I promise.” At Cas’ nod, tiny though it is, he settles himself carefully and picks up the thread. “You gotta know that love, it doesn’t stop you from hurting people. Sometimes, we hurt the people we love the most. Come on, Man. You’ve been around me and Sammy all these years. You’ve seen what we’ve done to each other.”

Cas is quiet, but there’s obviously something going on in his head. Dean sees the angel tighten his grip on his own wrist, like he’s holding himself together.

“What is it?” Dean asks. “Talk to me. What’s going on between me and you, all this crap that’s built up, we can’t fix it if you won’t talk to me.”

And he knows that’s unfair. Knows he’s turned away from Cas before, that he’s rejected apologies, but just because the Mark’s gone it doesn’t mean he’s suddenly all sweetness and light, and he’s just so tired. Too tired to give Cas the space he needs to come round to saying anything on his own. If he ever would. 

“You and Sam love each other,” Cas says. “You love Sam.”

And there it is. Cas doesn’t feel loved. 

Dean covers his face with one hand, his next words muffled.

“Cas, you do not want to get hung up on love like this. If I say we love you, will that make it okay that I beat you to a pulp? That make you stop being afraid of me? You don’t want to go that route. Love does not fix everything. It doesn’t. Hell, it’s pretty much ended the damn world, unless we find some way to stop this Darkness.”

He drops his hand and looks at his friend. Or ex-friend. He really isn’t sure if you can call someone who’s curled right up to stay away from you and who flinches whenever you move a friend. Victim, maybe. 

“What do you mean?” Cas asks.

“I mean, I was all set to kill Sam so he couldn’t keep trying to find me, to bring me back, and I was going to let Death send me…somewhere. Somewhere far away from here, so the Mark could never be removed and I could never hurt anyone else, but I messed up the swing. I didn’t kill Sam.”

“Because you love him.” Cas says it like a pronouncement, quiet though his voice still is.

“Yes. No.” Dean is just as firm. “Because it’s been pounded in to me to protect Sammy. You know, my Dad practically beat that into me, out of love,” and he almost sneers that word, “but he also told me to kill my own brother if he went evil, if he was dangerous. Did I do that? No. Sam died, and I wouldn’t let him stay dead, and then he thought he was saving me from having to fight against Lilith and let out the Devil, and here we are, years later, being sucked down that same drain again and taking the whole world with us.”

The bed is cramped and crowded, and Dean pushes himself to his feet and paces the room, not glancing at Cas. He needs to get this out. 

“Every time, it’s worse. I couldn’t kill my brother, so you know what I did? I killed Death. Death, Cas. Hell, might as well add him to the list. I helped my brother lock up the Devil, and an archangel. Watched you kill another one. We’ve killed gods and people and everything in between. Might as well kill Death himself. Only, Sam was stuck in this loop, as well, saving me no matter what, and now the Mark’s gone, and it turns out that was all that was keeping this Darkness at bay. So there you go. Love’s killed Death and the whole damn world along with him. You sure you want us to love you?”

Cas is silent. 

Dean checks on him, and stumbles back, catching himself before he falls.

Cas has left the bed, has stopped hunching. Castiel is straight-backed, his head up and his face blank. While Dean’s been pouring out all of his self-pity and mistakes, the older version of Castiel has reappeared, and he is looking right at Dean.

“You watched me kill an archangel,” Castiel says. “You locked up another one. Who? Who is the Devil?”

His mouth takes over before his brain can start up again.

“Lucifer. Lucifer’s the Devil. And you killed Raphael.” 

“Why would you lock up the Morningstar? He is the brightest of us all.” 

“Not…not by the time we met him,” Dean says. 

This time, it’s Dean who flinches as Castiel strides closer, no fear in the angel at all any more. There’s something beyond otherworldly about him. Being near him is burning and freezing and spinning out of control and being compressed, all at once. It makes Dean feel sick.

“Are you…? Are you sticking around this time?” he asks, his mind still skipping over any real control. 

“I need to find the rest of my Grace,” Castiel says. “Which archangels are left?”

Dean’s mouth is dry as he spits out the word. 

“None.”

When Castiel just stares at him, ancient and endless, he tries again.

“There’s just Lucy and Mike, down in the Cage.”

Another pronouncement, this one hard-edged as diamond. 

“Then you will take me to this Cage and we will release them.”


	10. Marble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a short update. Off to a funeral now for my husband's last grandparent.

Sam is behind his battlements of books again. He looks up at Dean, at Castiel at his side, and is on his feet and in front of them at once.

“Cas?” he asks, almost sounding like the Sam Cas had talked about, the Sam who would care. Understanding crosses his face without having to be told. He can probably feel that same compressed eternity that’s still making Dean feel like he’s floating, spinning in a vacuum, just by standing next to the guy. “You’re the archangel,” Sam says.

Dean’s jaw tightens at the satisfaction in his brother’s voice.

“I am,” Castiel says. “How could you allow the archangel for whom you are designed to be cast into a Cage?”

That sends Sam back a step, confusion scrawled across his features. The look Sam sends Dean says they will be having words, but there isn’t time for that. Not now. If they don’t sort this out, maybe never again, so Dean shakes his head and pushes on to the matter at hand.

“Cas…Er…Castiel says he needs Lucy or Mike. You got a way to get into the Cage?”

“What? Are you…? Are you mad?” Sam sounds disgusted. Like he has room to talk about crazy screams. 

“Describe the Cage to me, and I will find a way,” Castiel says, that cold certainty making Dean cruelly aware of how warm his Cas had become. “If they are truly the only two left, they must be freed.”

“You want us to let out the Devil? And the Devil’s holier-than-thou, wants-to-murder-the-world big brother?” 

Sam’s shock is clear. It’s also a balm, in a way. Dean spent a lot of the night just gone wondering how far Sam would be willing to go, if he’d blink at all at what they might end up having to do.

“Have you forgotten why we sacrificed what we did to get them in there?” Sam goes on, and it’s clear for a moment there that it’s slipped his mind they’ve summoned up some version of Cas who hasn’t lived the last however many thousands of years.

“I have not retained a great deal, by what you both say,” Castiel replies, but he doesn’t sound upset by it. Or especially curious. “Describe the Cage.”

And Sam does. The reasons they’d opened it, the rings, the fall. All this Dean knows, but his brother goes on, detailing the stink and the confinement and the horror of the place, the burning, endless knowledge that there was no way out. Until there was.

“I retrieved you?” Castiel asks.

“My body,” Sam says, in a harder tone than Dean has heard him use about that since they saw Cas walk into that lake, leaking Leviathan as he went. “You left my soul where it was.”

“For what purpose?” Castiel asks, as though there must have been one. 

Sam turns his head, twisting it sideways as though he can’t look right at Castiel while he says this.

“No purpose,” he says, the words flat and grey. “You said you didn’t know that’d happened.”

“I should be able to see your souls,” Castiel says. “I can’t. Whatever has happened to tear most of me away, it has lessened my abilities. Had this already taken place?”

“Cas…tiel, I don’t even know what abilities you’re talking about,” Dean breaks in, before Castiel can explain in any more calm, dispassionate detail why he might have accidentally left Sam to suffer for over a century. “You’ve never really made them clear. But you’ve never mentioned having more than one pair of wings, either. And you sure as Hell never mentioned being an archangel.”

For the first time, this Castiel almost expresses a reaction. Something close to surprise shifts fleeting across his face and is gone. Dean doubts anyone but him and Sam would notice.

“You are not surprised I am an angel,” he says. He doesn’t wait for them to respond. “What class did I claim to be?”

“A seraph,” Dean says. “Single pair of wings, zapping around the place, smiting anything you didn’t like. Up until you got your wings clipped.”

He can tell that the creature in front of him wants to know more about that, but no questions are asked about it. Not right now. 

“I must know why I would do this,” he says instead, but Dean gets the feeling more will be asked later, and that he’d best have good answers ready. “We will free the Moringstar and the Commander and we will summon the Host to battle.”

Dean and Sam exchange a look. Dean can just imagine Hannah and her angels running into this Castiel. It’s not so long ago they were calling him Commander, not Michael. 

“You might want to slow down there,” Dean tries. “There have been a lot of changes.”

“Changes which will affect my plans?”

His plans. Great. This reboot thing hasn’t made Cas any better at playing with others. It’s made it worse.

“You could say that,” he says. 

Castiel narrows his eyes, the first time he’s done that in this straight-backed form, and turns to Sam.

“Magic coils in you,” Castiel says. “You will perform a spell to shore up my Grace and then you will both tell me all that I need to know.”

“A spell?” Sam says. “I’m not-”

“It is simple enough. You will do this while the Michael-sword reports.”

Sam’s eyes flick up and down, like he’s scanning Castiel for some sign Dean can’t read, and he nods, and asks what he needs to do, and Dean is left the job of relieving huge chunks of the last years to a marble copy of his best friend.


	11. Armour

Burnt spices and the lingering stink of something sharp and half-rotten stick to Dean’s nostrils as he fills Castiel in on the last year, the clatter of Sam tidying up from the spell enough of an irritant that Dean has to stop himself from snapping at his brother.

He would snap at Castiel, but the archangel, if that’s really what he is and they haven’t just sent Cas mad, is just as unsettling as he was when he first got close to Dean, and the thought of raising his voice to him is…well, it’s not something Dean wants to do. And he’s yelled at the Devil.

The Devil he’s now trying to convince his suddenly-an-archangel, possibly-still-best-friend not to free from Hell. 

“There has to be something else we can do,” he tries, but the glow in those eyes doesn’t so much as flicker. “Come on, Cas. This is not a good idea.”

“The Lightbringer earned his name by driving back the Darkness so that God could bring forth life. He would not do as you say without reason. If the Mark corrupted him, and the Mark is now gone-”

“Pretty sure thousands of years of being a dick are gonna have left a mark of their own,” Dean says. 

Not snaps. He isn’t snapping. It’s just a lot closer than he meant to get.

Castiel regards him. It’s too distant to be called staring, really, and it’s the sort of look in any case that makes Dean feel he’s being studied and graded, and found wanting. He also gets the feeling that this Castiel doesn’t much care if Dean, specifically, fails. And that’s something else he’s clearly taken for granted, that Cas will care and have faith and hold Dean to some high standard, no matter what either of them do to mess up. 

“Look, all I’m saying is popping the lid on the Cage is a major step, and we have no reset button. The horsemen’s rings vanished back at Stull, and if we can find another way, then we should. Far as we can make out, this Darkness ain’t doing shit yet, so we’ve got time-”

This time, it’s Castiel who interrupts, and he does it by tilting his head.

“What, you don’t agree?” Dean asks, not wanting to admit how rattled it makes him to see something so…Cas on this being wearing his friend’s body. No. Not body. It’s Jimmy’s body, isn’t it? But it is Cas’ vessel and he’s the only one in there, something Dean didn’t really know until recently, and he wants Cas back, damn it.

“You say there are no other archangels left, and you can not tell me what has happened to lessen me so. Unless you can alter either of those factors, we must open this Cage and we must do so as a matter of urgency.”

“What urgency?” Dean asks, and now he knows he is being difficult, knows because he was engulfed in that smog of evil and he felt it chittering and cursing and corrupting as it swept through him, felt its pulse, familiar and alien at once after carrying the Mark. He knows whatever it will do, it’ll be bad. Still… “Like I said, it’s done nothing yet that we know of. What if we have weeks, months before it moves and we fling ourselves into more shit when we could come up with a better plan?” 

“There is not other plan, not with the rest of my archangels dead,” Castiel says. “For them all to have perished is a grave blow, and we must free the remaining two, both to restore me and to enlist their assistance.”

Dean closes his eyes and pushes a hand against his forehead. There’s a pain there that’s been building for a couple of hours, and it’s a beating, throbbing thing against his fingertips now. 

“Cas,” he says, and it’s easier to tell himself this is still his friend when he can’t see the alien look in the angel’s eyes, whatever kind of angel he is, “the last time the two of them were out and about, they tried to end the world, and they wanted to do it wearing me and Sam. This is not a good idea.”

Castiel’s voice has frost riming the edges when he replies.

“The Morningstar is second only to the Commander in battle. Both are needed, with or without the others of my sphere. As for your other concern, you are the Michael-sword. It is your purpose. Your protest makes no sense.”

Dean’s still staring at the inside of his own eyelids, which should be near as dark as the cloud of…whatever it was that erupted from the earth, but he can see flashes of colour. It isn’t all dark. He tells himself that’s significant, somehow, a lesson he can take and carry into the fray, because that’s a damn sight better than believing the angel who gave up an army for him expects him to play suit of armour for that uber-dick Michael.

He speaks from behind his closed eyes. It has nothing to do with not wanting to look at Castiel. Nothing. It’s just this headache.

“Maybe I didn’t make it clear. You got on board with screwing destiny right in the face. You beat me up when I decided to say ‘Yes’ to Michael, said I’d be throwing away everything you’d done. And now you want me to play archangel dress-up?”

The pause before Castiel answers is long, and Dean hears Sam’s footsteps approaching, hears them stop near Dean’s shoulder, before the archangel speaks. He pries his eyelids open to see Castiel still with that same near-blank face, but the iciness is stronger, if anything, than it was, and each word is crystal in its clarity.

“It is my role to preside over the fall of princes,” he says, “not to assist them in succumbing to selfish motivations. Not to assist them making choices which put their own survival over that of the world. Your own report makes clear that my actions, and yours, were a mistake. This must be set right.”

Castiel stands, and Dean sees Sam rock slightly on his feet. He doesn’t blame his brother. Dean’s full-on fighting an instinct to reel back, as well. But he refuses to do that. To back away from Cas. He did it in the dungeon out of shock, but he’s had time to brace himself now and he will not do it again. This is still Castiel, buried in there somewhere, and Dean’s seen him break free of heavenly programming before. When it comes to it, Cas won’t let Dean, or Sam, be blotted out by the star that is an archangel. 

Not that you’d know it from the way the celestial whatever speaks now.

He looks down at the brothers, managing it somehow even though Sam is standing, and makes yet another pronouncement.

“The both of you will play your roles and set this world to rights. Your true roles. You will be the weapons for the two greatest archangels as they fight back the Darkness once more. It is your duty.”

And there is nothing of Cas in his eyes when he says it.


	12. Silence

“Sam, you heard him,” Dean hisses as they head to the Impala, bags slung over their shoulders and safely away from Castiel, Dean thinks, hopes, to be able to say this. “He wants to hand us over as gifts to his brothers. Both of them.”

“It won’t come to that,” Sam says, and he sounds certain. 

Dean wishes he could scare up some certainty from somewhere, for anything other than the fact that he wants Cas back. Now. 

“You can’t know that. It’s not like you avoided being Lucifer’s party-dress before, and I don’t know about you, but I am a lot more tired these days than I was back then. Hell, I can still take a beating, but it’s taking more coffee to get going in the mornings, you know?”

“You need more coffee to fight the Devil?” Sam asks, and for a fleeting moment it’s like having the Sam back who snarks at Dean and mocks him, who plays tricks and laughs and champions his brother. 

“You know what I mean,” Dean grumbles, opening the boot and chucking his bag in. 

He waits for Sam to do the same and slams the boot closed, the thud a satisfying line through the silence. 

That’s one thing he has noticed. It’s quiet. Far too quiet. He’s sure there’s normally more birdsong around, not that he’s the sort to stand around listening to it. The worse thing is, he can’t really be so certain, so absolutely positive that it’s an objective change, to be able to point to it as a sign of anything. It’s just…too quiet. 

“You get anywhere working out what this Darkness means for us? How it’ll hit?” Dean asks, moving around the Impala to the driver’s door but lingering with his hand on the handle. If he can delay the start of this journey, it’s no bad thing.

Sam shakes his head, his eyes scanning the horizon for…something. Maybe he’s wondering about the lack of sound, as well.

“Nah. And Castiel doesn’t seem to know. I guess the Earth wasn’t around the last time they fought it.”

“You find any signs of anything going on?”

Sam shakes his head again and Dean grunts, opens the door, slides into the car. They’re about the set off on a road-trip to rip open Hell, and they don’t even know for sure they need to do it. 

Sam joins him in the car as Dean watched the bunker door in the rear-view mirror. Castiel will turn up soon enough, he’s sure. Whatever spell he had Sam cast seems to have worked. There’s been no sign of him lapsing back into Dean’s Cas, the archangel cold and present for over a day now. 

Two nights they’ve spent at the bunker since the Mark was banished, the lock broken, and as far as Dean can tell the only thing that’s really happened is he’s lost his best friend. 

“It’s not like he hasn’t changed before,” Sam says.

Dean’s left hand tightens where it clasps the steering-wheel and he glances at his brother to see that same determined look Sam’s worn a lot lately. 

“So we just clap our hands and cheer that he’s not really Cas anymore? That it? Come on, Sam. He’s like a brother to you, too.”

The look Sam gives him then is loaded, but before Dean can ask what it means, Castiel appears and folds himself into the back seat, straight-backed and out of place. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. He’s already made their orders very clear and Sam, at least, is insisting on following them. For now. 

Dean doesn’t get it. Sam gave that whole speech about being good, about not dying, and Dean didn’t sacrifice either of them for the greater good, so why is it okay now? Just a few days later? 

No-one’s talking, and there’s no reason to hold off on getting started, so he turns the key in the ignition and lets the rumble of the car carry him onto the road to Stull.


	13. Stull

You’d never guess the world almost ended here.  
It’s calm. Quiet. The same quiet Dean noticed at the bunker, but softened, somehow, by where they are. Maybe it’s just that a graveyard seems like the right place for quiet.  
“What do we do now?” he asks, standing with his hands thrust deep into his jacket pockets, Sam off to the side, as they both watch the archangel walk steadily across the space, back and forth like he’s looking for something.  
He doesn’t answer Dean, but he does stop walking, his gaze fixed on the grass, and stab his angel blade into the dirt. One sure, swift movement, and that’s the earth run through.  
Castiel stands and looks down at the blade like he hasn’t just done something that makes no sense. He looks, if anything, vaguely satisfied. Purposeful.  
“That it?” Dean asks, raising his voice to be heard. “You just needed to gank the ground?”  
“This is the spot where you last opened the Cage,” Castiel says, not even looking at them. He’s staring at the sky.  
Dean wants to protest, to say it’s the only place they opened the Cage, but the memory of light blazing up in that church stills his tongue. Beside him, he hears Sam shift, can imagine the flash of guilt and stubbornness on his brother’s face. It pales, now, with what they’ve so recently done.  
“This is the spot where it should stay shut,” Dean says, because he has to try. He really does. Even though he’s sure it’s futile.  
“I can almost see the edges,” Castiel says, ignoring him, “but not clearly enough to grasp them. We will need a way to open them. To pull the princes out.”  
Dean bites back his next words. He’s already told Castiel, over and over, that the rings are gone. Death is gone. Gabriel is gone, with any other ideas he might have had. That’s all the archangels and the one being possibly older than God that they could call on, and still this cold creature in his friend’s vessel, with his friend’s name, is insisting there’s a way to do this.  
“Cas,” he tries, desperation making him fall back on the more familiar name, “we need to find another idea.”  
He gets no response.  
The breeze ruffles his hair, or makes an attempt to. All it really does it underline how still everything is. Sam isn’t making any noise. Dean feels like he’s trapped in thickened air, stuck not moving in case he sets some other cosmic pebble tumbling into a landslide. And Castiel… Castiel is absolutely still, his gaze turned upwards and the angel blade at his feet looking like a tether, like there should be some chord stretching between it and the archangel, keeping him grounded. Even that breeze isn’t pushing the tan folds of the coat, still ragged and bloody, where they fall against Cas’ thighs. The world itself looks to be setting some space around him, leaving him to do whatever it is this angelic throwback is doing.  
Stillness shifts, becoming solid, electric, and Dean feels sparks lifting from his skin, feels them before he sees them. He hears Sam gasp. It’s a quick, choked back sound, something that slips out quick and unthought before the mind kicks in and clamps down on it.  
No movement from Castiel.  
The first blue arc burns a negative across Dean’s retinas, slashing over Castiel like the guy’s in a photo torn in two.  
Dean blinks, manages to move one hand enough to rub at his eyes, and by then there are two, ten, fifty arcs, stabbing from sky to archangel or from archangel to sky. Dean can’t tell which way round it goes. Maybe neither. Maybe both.  
Castiel still hasn’t moved, but now Dean gets the impression it’s because he’s being held, pulled and pressed and pinned. There’s a tension to his shoulders, to his neck, to his face, that says he’s straining, and Dean wants to rush in, to pull him out, but he can’t. He can’t.  
If he could move, he should be pulling Sam away, should be covering his own face and ducking, and he can’t do that, either. The best he can do is to shield his eyes with the hand he already has up at his face, but the pressure’s building up and up and up and now he isn’t sure he could drop his hand if he wanted to, isn’t sure if he’s been here for minutes or whether the sky should be shading to star-studded black, isn’t sure…isn’t sure…isn’t sure…  
A final blast strikes at Castiel, hits him, rushes out.  
The solid thud of dirt under his spine jars Dean’s head clear.  
He’s on his back, staring up at a sky that’s just the same as it was before Castiel started whatever it is he’s done, and time’s snapped back. He can feel it, folding firm about him. Only a few minutes have passed.  
“Sam?” he calls, knowing he should get up. He just needs a minute. Just another minute.  
“Here, Dean,” his brother says, from only a few feet away. He sounds winded.  
“Cas?”  
There’s no answer to that one.  
It takes far more effort than it should have done to roll to his side, to his knees, to his feet. He more or less staggers upright, and his eyes are drawn right to the blade, still standing in the dirt. And next to it, a rumpled pile of limbs and dark hair.  
Still not moving.


	14. Eyes

Castiel rolls under Dean’s hands, no resistance in him at all. Sam joins Dean on the ground next to their friend, and together they get the guy onto his back. His eyes are open.   
They don’t look like they’re seeing anything.  
“Cas?” Dean tries. Stupid to think it’ll work any better now than it has the other times he’s already shouted it, as he stumbled over the grass, as he landed on his knees. As he reached out and felt the lack of anything where there’d been that sucking sense of eternity.   
“Dean-” Sam starts.  
But Dean can’t hear it. Not yet.   
“No. No, he’s just…knocked out.”  
“He isn’t breathing.” And the practicality in his brother’s voice, the calm reason, is cause enough to rant and rail and punch anything he can reach.  
Instead, Dean pulls Cas up, so that dark hair is resting on Dean’s arm and the angel’s upper body is draped over Dean’s legs. He knows, distantly, that he shouldn’t move someone like this. It can risk injury to the back. It can risk all sorts. He ought to care about that. Because Cas is alive. He’s alive, so it still matters.   
“He didn’t after the Leviathan. He still came back.”  
He doesn’t know if he means right away, when Cas woke up and straight away started apologising, or later, in that picket-fence house when Dean had gone looking for a cure for his brother and had found something of his own cure, as well.   
“All right,” Sam says, after a pause. “What do you want to do with him?”  
“Do with him? What do you mean, ‘do with him’? He’s not a fucking parcel, Sam. We aren’t going to shove him in the boot of the car.”  
Sam closes his eyes and speaks in a tone that is far too level.  
“I mean, are we waiting here for him to come round or are we getting out of here?”  
“You think all that lightning’s gonna pull something up?” Dean asks, hunching slightly over Cas as though he has a hope of shielding the guy from whatever might erupt out of the earth.  
“It looked pretty powerful,” Sam says. “We should at least check on it from a safe distance.”  
Dean looks down at those open eyes again, searching for any sign of awareness in the blue. Cas’ mouth is slightly open, as though he’s surprised, and that near-permanent part-frown is gone from his face.   
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”  
Dean needs Sam’s help to stand, to get a secure grip on the six foot of vessel he has to lug to the car. He’s going to give Cas grief about this, once this is all over and the angel is back the way he was and they have time. He’s going to give Cas so much grief.   
Sam tries to tug the angel blade out of the ground, but grunts and glares at it after a few attempts.  
“It’s not moving,” he says.   
“Some King Arthur thing?” Dean asks, his back already telling him he can’t carry Cas around the way he used to carry frightened children.  
Sam shakes his head, not bothering with a reply, and they leave the blade where it is. Cas will have to come back for it later.  
The back-seat is cold against the backs of his hands as he slides Cas in as comfortably as he can. Dean’s back aches. Guy’s not light. Lighter than it feels he should be, but not light.  
Sam takes the wheel without asking, leaving Dean to make his way to the passenger seat and twist to stare back at the unconscious angel as they back out of the cemetery and make for the nearest motel.   
Nothing’s turned up at the place, yet, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. They need to be close enough to deal with it if they need to. Hopefully, Castiel will have woken up by then.  
As the Impala’s wheels leave the grass behind and touch asphalt, Dean leans over and closes the angel’s eyes.


	15. Cas

There’s still no sure sign of anything coming of those lightning strikes by the time Sam pulls up in the parking lot and slips out of the car to book them a room. No signs except for the gathering of storm clouds, the atmosphere drawing heavy and metallic around Dean as he stands by the car and waits.  
When Sam comes back, they get Cas into the room and on to one of the beds, his eyes still closed so he looks like he’s sleeping.  
He is sleeping. He is.  
Soon, he’ll wake up and Dean can ask him what the fuck he thought he was playing at, what he was hoping to achieve.   
He checks Cas’ pulse, just to see, but there’s nothing there. Of course there isn’t. He’s an angel, or an archangel, or some weird mix between the two. Cas has been out cold for days before. Take that time they saw Mom and Dad. Cas had been splayed out on that bed for four days, minimum, before he’d sat bolt upright and insisted he was fine. Dean hadn’t thought to check for a pulse that time.   
Sam sits down at the battered table and pulls out his laptop, booting it up and tapping something into it with barely a glance at the occupant of the bed. The clatter of the keyboard goes on for a while before it batters tiny pinches of pain in to Dean’s head and he has to ask.  
“What are you even doing? You think there’s some wiki out there gonna tell you what Cas was doing?”  
“You never know,” Sam says. “We’ve found weirder things on-line.”  
Unbidden, a quip rises in Dean’s mind about what kind of things his brother might have found on-line, what he might have been looking for, but it withers and dies before he can be bothered to say it. It would be hollow, in any case, any attempt at a joke, and he doesn’t feel like playing that role right now.   
“Maybe we should just hightail it back to the bunker. See what we’ve got in the books there,” he says instead.  
The books are mostly in piles, now, dotted around the floors and tables in buttresses and crenelations, waiting to be placed back on shelves, but at least they aren’t in the bonfire. He has no idea what to do about the ones soaked through with gasoline. Those are out back, stacked in crates with a tarpaulin over them.   
“You ever seen anything about the Cage in one?” Sam asks.  
Dean shakes his head.  
“But we weren’t exactly looking.”  
Besides, it’s not just the Cage he wants to look up. He glances at Cas again, but the guy’s still not moved. Somehow, with all these years of having a… What had Cas called himself? A celestial being as a best friend, and he still hadn’t ever looked up how to heal one. Cas had seemed more or less indestructible, or, when he’d died, it had been sudden and so cataclysmic that there’d be no time to dive into research mode.  
“I still think we’re better staying here for now,” Sam says.   
His fingers haven’t so much as slowed down on the keys, and any gaps in the sound are just because Sam’s scrolling and clicking instead.   
“Are you even looking for something to help Cas?” Dean asks at last.  
At that, Sam stops, rests his hands on the table, looks at his brother. He has that focused, hard look to him, still.  
“Yes,” he says, “but I can’t find anything. And nothing on what that lightning might have been.”  
“It reminded me of Raphael,” Dean says, memories of an abandoned house and a pissed of archangel crossing his mind. “The first time I met him.”  
“So you think it’s some sort of archangel thing? Not anything specifically to do with the Cage?” Sam asks.  
“Who the fuck knows?”  
Sam sighs and goes back to the Internet, but it isn’t much longer before he announces he’s off to get food. If the next world-ending event isn’t happening just yet, they might as well stay fed. As he’s leaving, he finally looks at Cas. Dean is almost sure he sees concern, but it’s fleeting.   
“If he’s no better by the morning…”  
He leaves the words hanging, and Dean, for all he knows about his brother, isn’t sure what was going to come next. Take Cas to the hospital? Burn him before he starts to stink?   
He stares at Sam until Sam takes the hint and leaves.   
It’s quiet when it’s just Dean.   
On his own, it’s easier to shift over to the bed, to lean over Cas and touch a hand to his forehead, to his cheek. He can’t tell is the skin is cold or just cooler than Dean’s.   
“Come on, Cas,” he says. “Wake up. Wake up and scowl at me and tell me how I was being ridiculous, worrying like this. I…I don’t want to lose you, man. I mean, whatever’s coming, it’s bad. Archangel-you has been pretty clear on that. And, yeah, we need your help. Another pair of hands on the job. But it’s not just that. I need you. I-”  
Movement. He swears he just felt movement.  
“Cas?”  
It’s only because he’s staring from so close that he sees the angel’s eyes shift, under the lids. It’s a tiny thing. But it’s something.   
“Cas,” he says again, louder this time, and he grips Cas’ shoulder with his right hand, rests his left palm against his friend’s cheek. It’s sappy and it’s going to confuse the angel no end, but Dean needs to have that contact right now.  
The shifting of Cas’ eyes speeds up, like he’s dreaming. Then, with a gasp, he opens his eyes, locking them right on to Dean. And flinches.  
Dean backs away, his hands pulling away as fast as he can make it happen, and he watches as Cas looks around, tilting his head back on the pillow to get a look around the whole room.   
He watches as Cas pushes himself up and looks around again. It seems to take a while for whatever thought is going through the guy’s mind to reach any sort of conclusion. When it does, he glances at Dean, not quite looking at him fully. There’s a sense of trembling, fine and uncontrollable, to the way the angel sits, and a hint of uncertainty in his voice when he finally speaks.  
“This isn’t the bunker,” Cas says. “Where are we?”  
Dean wishes he could talk that spark of fear right out of his friend, but he remembers being wary around Cas when he reappeared after the beat-down in that crypt, how in the one night Cas had spent with them in the bunker, Dean had found himself covering with anger when really it was just he couldn’t stop seeing Cas’ hands curled into fists, descending on him.   
“Er. A motel. Near Stull.”  
“Stull?” Cas’ eyes narrow. “What are we doing in Stull? How did I get here?”  
Smiling just a bit, Dean shrugs.  
“You sat in the back of the car, stiff as a board. And before you say anything else, it was your idea.”  
At Cas’ disbelieving look, he goes on, and if he was hoping his words would bring reassurance, he was wrong.  
“An archangel?” Cas asks, and it’s like he’s forgotten they asked him about this back at the bunker. Dean begins to wonder if memory-loss is something Cas still gets bouts of, whether years of having his mind messed about with has left him injured in ways they haven’t noticed before. “That makes no sense. I remember the evolution of your species. I was an ordinary Seraph. Not one of the seven.”  
“Wait. Seven?”  
Dean has been having a hard enough time updating his list to five.  
“Yes.” Cas tilts his head and gives Dean a strange look, as though he’s wondering how someone so frightening can also be so stupid. “Seven. I’ve told you this.”  
“No, Cas, you really haven’t,” Dean says.   
They stare at each other for a while, locked in some weird attempt at… Hell if Dean knows.  
It isn’t until the key turns in the door that they break the stare, and Dean’s glad to see Sam come through the door. He’s glad to see relief on Sam’s face at Cas being up.   
“Cas,” Sam says. “When did you wake up?”  
He asks it like there was never any doubt that Cas would come back to them, even though Dean saw the way his brother looked at the angel, and up at Dean, like he was thinking how long he’d have to leave it before prying Dean away from his friend and setting up the pyre.  
“Not long,” Cas says.   
“Cas here was just telling me he doesn’t believe he’s an archangel,” Dean says. He raises an eyebrow at Sam. “Says he’s not on the seven.”  
“Seven?” Sam asks, pausing in his task of fishing burgers out of paper bags.  
“Yes,” Cas says, a not of impatience in his voice. “I’m sure I must have mentioned it. There are seven archangels.”  
“You mean ‘were’,” Dean breaks in. “Since you ganked Raphael and all. And Lucifer did for Gabe.”  
“Right.” But Cas doesn’t sound certain.  
“Look,” Sam says, and he’s got the food all split up onto plates now, the third plate with less on it as though he’s not sure whether he should be offering some to Cas or not, “why don’t you both come and eat and Cas can fill us in on these archangels as we go. All right?”  
Cas pulls away when Dean reaches out a hand to help him up, but it’s okay. It’s all okay. The world is still about to be swallowed by the Darkness, they have no idea what Cas remembers and they have no idea what Castiel was doing in the cemetery, but Cas is awake and here. So it’s all okay.


	16. Glow

Cas stares at the plate of food as though unsure what it is. Dean would love to believe that, would love to convince himself that the guy has never needed to know the bite of hunger or how to ease it, but the creature that strode into his life in a shower of sparks and mystery has been homeless, has been hungry and has huddled on the streets, and Dean knows it.

There must be another reason for Cas to be watching the food the way he is.

He has his arms curled around himself, low-down over his belly, like he’s trying to keep himself in, and he’s hunched forwards just slightly, the concave shape of his body somehow cutting a sharp line between him and the rest of the room. Between him and the hunters sitting at the same table.

Maybe he’s looking at the food just so he doesn’t have to look at them.

“So, Cas,” Sam says, his gaze sliding over Dean on its way to their friend, like he’s checking for a reaction. “Tell us about these other archangels. You said there were seven? That including you?”

Cas’ frown deepens. He almost looks as though he doesn’t remember what Sam is talking about and when he speaks it’s with the air of someone just grasping the fraying edges of some thought before it dissipates entirely.

“Seven. Yes. There were… I wasn’t one of them, no. I’m an ordinary Seraph. An archangel is…much more powerful.” He shifts, tilts his head, looks to be seeking out something in his mind. “Obviously, you know Lucifer and Michael. Gabriel and Rapael. And then… and then…” 

He stutters to a halt, his voice fainter by the end. His lips are still parted as though he didn’t intend to stop speaking. 

“And then?” Sam prompts.

Dean feels as though he’s watching a scene he can’t affect, all of a sudden, as though he’s looking at a screen and seeing his brother and his angel acting out some play that’s separate from him. It all falls away, becoming flat and distant, and the edges of his world spin darkly. 

Cas glows.

In the dim room, with light leeching away all around it, Castiel is blue and white light, spilling out. But he’s twisted and tight, where he should be expansive and blazing. Dean wants to untangle that light, to set it strong and solid and all-encompassing at the center of the world and see it chase all of the shadows away. 

“Dean? Dean, you okay, there?”

Sam’s voice brings him back, shuddering, to a shabby motel room and a plate of cold fries. He holds himself still. His right hand rests on the table, right next to the plate. He feels the cold wood pressing up into the meat of his hand, sees his thumb flex. Such a tiny, solid thing in the face of all that formless darkness.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Just spacey. Need to get some sleep, right?” He doesn’t wait for a reply. “You were saying?”

He looks at Cas to find the angel watching him, his chin lowered so that he’s looking up at Dean. Wary. Non-threatening. He looks to have beaten Cas into submitting, but he has no idea what the guy’s submitting to. 

“Cas?” he tries.

It seems to jolt his friend. Cas’ eyes flicker down and away, but he starts speaking again.

“Uriel was an archangel,” he says, and it seems to Dean that Cas is rediscovering something he’d forgotten.

“Ur-” Dean starts.

Sam cuts him off with a wave of his hand. “And the others?”

Cas shakes his head, his eyes still turned away from Dean, but now not looking at anything. They’re unfocused, moving from side to side the way eyes do in a dream.

“I…I can’t see them. I see the…shape of them. The shape. But they aren’t there. I can’t…”

Dean cuts off the note of rising panic, leaning over the table and almost into Cas’ space. He regrets it at once, as Cas cringes and stops speaking. It’s subtle. Most people wouldn’t realise the angel had moved at all. But Dean knows. 

“Hey,” he tries anyway, even though it seems Cas is more afraid of Dean than he is of his own mind unraveling. “Hey, it’s okay. We know Naomi made mincemeat of your memories. Just keep poking around. See what you can find.”

Like he’s telling Cas to search through a storage locker, or an attic, to see if he can find the Christmas lights. 

Cas nods, almost, almost meeting Dean’s gaze, before closing his eyes and going still. 

Dean shares a look with Sam, who shrugs. Some angel thing. Or maybe the guy’s picked up meditating. He must have done something to pass the time back when he was human. 

It seems wrong to talk over Cas if he’s trying to ferret out something useful from his own mind, but just sitting eating the now stone-cold fries is an option Dean can’t put up with. He has to be out of here, to be away from this angel who’s his ally and trusts him, from this archangel who’s ancient and distant, and most of all from his best friend who’s wary of him.

He nods at Sam, miming and pulling faces at him. As far as he can tell, his brother gets it, and Dean lifts his jacket from the back of the chair and leaves, shutting the door on that whole mess, just for a bit, and walking out into the gathering darkness.


	17. Veins

He finds a diner. 

It’s steamy and close and warm inside, the kind of atmosphere that feels staged, like someone decided to make an authentic roadhouse and pulled out too many stops: an over-saturated image. 

Dean slumps in a booth near the back, keeping a vague watch on the place, and nurses a cup of coffee. 

He thought about finding something harder to drink, but he feels that he’s losing the margins of his grasp on reality as it is, and he doesn’t need anything to grease his hold. So he sits, and he folds one hand around a tepid cup of dark, bitter liquid, and he thinks about how when the world ends there won’t be any more of this.

He wonders how many people out there would put crappy diners so high on the list of reasons to save the world. 

“You want a refill, Hon?” 

Flashing an automatic smile at the server, whose light brown hair is frizzing in the damp warmth, he shakes his head.

“Nah. I’m good.”

“Probably smart,” she says, her own smile making it to her eyes, but just barely. The paper-thin skin under her eyes, smudged by exhaustion, makes it clear she’s only on her feet because she has to be. She’s probably had way more coffee than Dean has. “You let me know if you change your mind, though.”

“Will do,” he says, and there’s a feeling of warmth in his smile that he didn’t have before. Staying on your feet when all you want to do is lie down and sleep… It’s so human. So everyday, low-key heroic. It’s getting up and getting to work and getting on with it, when it isn’t dramatic or showy or end-of-the-world. He hopes to God he hasn’t ended her world. 

After that, he watches her. He watches her pour salt into shakers and coffee into mugs. He watches her wipe down tables and smile with more warmth than she gets back from pretty much anyone in the place. He watches her keeping on, on tired feet and worn-down hope, and he wonders how people do this. How do they stay the course in these lives of daily grind and small victories, instead of breaking and running? Hell, he barely made it a year in suburbia, and even then he had one eye on the door. If the other eye hadn’t been on the whiskey bottle, maybe he’d have gone before Sam came and fetched him. 

He wonders if the waitress would have walked out on her family and spent the evening watching a stranger work.

Sighing, he shifts in his seat and reaches into his pocket, stretching his body so he can work the phone out. Stupid slim things. A quick check tells him he has four messages from Sam, and he’s listening to the first one, a terse message that Dean had better be bringing more food back, finished up with a quiet comment that Cas is sleeping and Dean needs to keep the noise down when he gets back, when he catches movement out of the corner of his eye.

The waitress.

At first, he doesn’t take in what he’s seeing. She sags, her frizzled hair flying up as she falls down, her knees hitting the linoleum with a crack. Dean’s half-way out of his seat when he sees it: spiderweb lines running up her shin, along her thigh, like an extra set of veins, her skin peeling back where they touch. There’s a cold, acrid stink in the air: charred flesh and stinging ice.

She starts screaming as Dean is half-way across the space, convulses as he drops to the ground. Is dead when he reaches out to her.

Dean pulls his hand back and stares, shame and disgust crawling up his throat. Those veins are still throbbing on her skin. They’re red and familiar. 

He clutches at his forearm, where smooth, unblemished skin screams at him that this is his fault.


	18. Lead

He doesn’t hang around for the police to show up. 

The click of the motel door is loud and Sam’s head snaps up in warning as Dean slips into the room, his whole face set in a way that makes Dean even more careful about stepping lightly than he’d already been. When Sam notices Dean’s empty hands, his eyes narrow, and Dean doesn’t even have the energy to glare back.

It’s maybe a few seconds later that his brother’s expression changes, concern and a question lurking on his face, and he pushes his chair back, wincing at the noise it makes. Dean glances at the bed to see Cas isn’t moving and by the time he looks back Sam is beside him, leaning down and studying Dean. 

“What’s happened?” he asks, when Dean doesn’t say anything.

He shakes his head.

“Fucking… I just watched someone split apart, Sam. Right in front of me, just working at the diner and she’s split apart by the Darkness.” His words are harsh, for all they’re quiet, and he lifts a hand before Sam can ask. “Yeah. I’m sure it’s something to do with that. It… There were marks.”

He sees Sam’s lips part and then close again, understanding dawning. Marks. His brother might not be picturing it exactly, but he’s got the reference, all right. 

“Yeah,” Dean says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. He jerks his chin at the bed. “What about him? Anything?”

Sam’s brow furrows, and there’s more concern in it than there was back at the bunker. There’s that, at least. Maybe Sam is coming down from the steeliness that got into him lately. Maybe he’s able to see Cas as important and alive now, too, and not just as a game-piece in some plan to save Dean.

“He was out of it by the time I made him lie down. Dazed. I’m wondering what he’s going to wake up as.”

“You think we’ll get archangel Cas again?”

Sam shrugs, but the way he looks at Cas is speculative. There’s an edge of hope there. Dean doesn’t know which version of Cas Sam is hoping for. Game-piece might still be the mind-set, then. 

Sam’s always been the more ruthless one, when pushed.

“We should wake him up. See what he knows.” 

But Dean doesn’t move to put his actions into words. Even from here, he can see Cas’ head is tucked down, that his spine is curved, like the angel’s trying to curl himself into a protective ball. Dean knows Cas’ shoulders are broad, that the guy’s got muscles. It just doesn’t seem like it, looking at him on that bed, the sheet drawn up so he’s an outline. 

A blast of sound makes the move for him, blaring out from his pocket and breaking the hush in the room. His phone.

Cas jerks awake, his body tense lines as his head moves, and Dean doesn’t need to see them to know Cas’ eyes are shifting, seeking out threats and data. Not that he’ll get much while facing the wall. 

By the time Dean fumbles his phone out and on, bringing it to his ear and catching a panicked tumble of words, Cas is on his feet, not quite looking at Dean. It’s their version of Cas, then. The version Dean’s broken. 

For a split second, he longs for the other version, the one barely out of its original packaging. The one he hasn’t yet cracked and split and put back together all wrong. 

It takes real effort to focus on the words spilling from the phone.

“Dean? Dean, are you getting this? What is it? What should we be doing?”

Garth. 

“How many did you say have died?”

Because even as he watched Cas sway to his feet, Dean took in the garbled account of people split open by veins of darkness, their bodies left open at the seams.

“Three,” Garth says. “And I have no idea what to do. And the stench…”

He trails off, and Dean can only imagine how fucked up it must be to a werewolf’s nose.

“Tell me you and Sam had nothing to do with this,” Garth says.

Dean closes his eyes and swallows. He says the next words into the darkness behind his eyelids. He should be the one in darkness. Not all these innocent people. 

“Sorry, man. Wish I could.”

To his credit, there’s only a brief pause before Garth sighs and speaks again.

“Then tell me you have a plan to fix it. Come on. You stopped the Apocalypse, you and Sam and Bobby and your angel friend. You can do it again.”

“How’d you know…?” Because some things are general hunter knowledge by now, yeah, but that sounded suspiciously succinct.

“Charlie turned me on to those books,” Garth says, and, despite his clear panic about this new threat, he sounds almost cheerful about that. “What does my Queen have to say about this, anyway?”

Dean didn’t even know Charlie and Garth knew each other. Not that is matters. Not now.

“Charlie…Er…” The pang of grief is biting. He’s still talking into the dark and it feels like the closest thing to comfort he currently has. “Charlie’s gone, man.” 

This time, the silence is longer. He thinks he hears a sob, but if Garth is crying he’s turned the phone away from his mouth. 

When his voice comes back, it’s rougher. 

“She… Um… How’d it happen?”

Almost against his will, Dean opens his eyes and looks at Sam. He’s not sure he will ever forgive his brother. Not entirely. They’ve got people killed before, the two of them, but this one cuts deeper. Sam dragged Charlie in, Sam hared off and left her with Cas, who is still not human, no matter that he spent time as one, and who didn’t know how to keep Charlie settled and safe. Sam kept that damn book. 

“Long story,” he says to Garth, and watches as Sam sags, just slightly. Perhaps he expects Dean to spill the whole sorry tale, like that would help. “I don’t know what to tell you. We’ve got a lead, maybe, on how to get rid of this new evil. Called the Darkness. Not panned out, yet, though. About this way people are dying…”

He trails off and shrugs, as though Garth will be able to see that.

“I’ll see if I can find anything,” Garth says. “You got any more intel?”

Sam holds out his hand and nods at Cas. Dean gives his brother the phone and lets Sam fill in the details, the low rumble of his voice a background as Dean turns in the direction Sam nodded. To Cas.

Who’s staring at his own hand like he’s never seen it before. 

“Cas?” Dean asks, approaching warily, one hand out in case that helps. This time, he gets right up to Cas and lays his other hand on the guy’s shoulder. He copes with the tiny flinch. It’s something it looks like he’ll have to get used to. “Cas? You doing okay?”

He has to dip his head and lean in to catch the reply. It’s more a mutter than anything. 

“Where are we?”

“The motel. Same as before.”

But Cas doesn’t look like that means anything to him. 

“Near Stull, Cas. You remember? I told you we went to the cemetery. You were being archangel-you. Wanted to open the Cage.”

“I haven’t been an archangel for a very long time.”

Dean shoots a look at Sam, but his brother is still on the phone with Garth, speaking insistently. Dean looks back at Cas, who has a distant look on his eyes, like he isn’t focusing on what’s in front of him at all.

“But you do remember being an archangel?” he asks.

“I was fire,” Cas says, a hint of wonder gilding his words. “I was eternity. And then…I was not. I was…this.”

His brow furrows, as though he’s confused by what he’s saying, and he finally looks at Dean. He doesn’t look as afraid as he did the last time he met Dean’s eyes. There’s that. He does look ten times as lost.

“How could I forget something like that?”

“I don’t know, Cas. But it’s coming back, right? You’re remembering more each time you talk about it.”

Cas’ eyes drift away, fixing on an empty spot in the corner, and Dean gets the feeling the guy’s talking to himself, his voice a low susurrus of sound.

“I was God’s eyes. I was Witness. I stretched the length and breadth of the universe and I was a blazing light. I was… I was God’s eyes.”

His voice grows too quiet to make out the words, but Dean has the sinking feeling, deep in his gut, that Cas is repeating the same thing, over and over, a mantra that does nothing but make Dean want to find something to smash to pieces. Cas is slipping away again, slipping away into some mind-space where Dean can’t follow him. Can’t follow him and drag him back. 

Sam’s words finally stop and Dean looks round to see his brother standing with the phone down at his side, watching Cas.

“What’s up with him?” Sam asks.

“I think it’s his mind,” Dean says. “He remembers being an archangel, he says, but it’s shorted him out or something.”

“Garth’s going to see what he can find,” Sam says, as though that’s on the same level as Cas losing his mind. Again. “I’m going to see if I can find anything on people dying the way you just saw. Give me a full run-down.”

Dean’s reluctant to leave Cas just standing there staring at nothing, so he guides his friend back to the bed and leave him perched on the edge. He has no clue if Cas even knows he’s moved. 

Filling Sam in on the details doesn’t take long, and it’s not much longer before Sam turns up more deaths matching the description, just the one nearby, the waitress, whose name turns out to be Susie, and four in Lawrence. There are more in Topeka and in Kansas City, and others scattered about the surrounding areas. 

They all happened in the last few hours.

“This keeps up…” Dean doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. Is this a time-specific thing? Will this stop soon, or will it just keep happening? 

Sam pulls a face and keeps searching.

“I can’t find anything on-line about this,” he says. “About how to stop it.”

It’s looking more and more like they need to get back to the bunker and trawl through the books again. They have something new to look for, now, at any rate. Dean wishes the deaths of all these people didn’t count as helpful. It feels like saying the deaths are worth it. 

He’s stopped from suggesting they head out by Cas standing up and heading to the door.

“Hey. Hey, Cas. Where you off to?”

He gets in between the angel and the door, but Cas’ eyes are glassy. Dean isn’t sure how much is going in.

“Cas. We’re way past you just flapping off without a word, man.” 

Not that Cas has been flapping anywhere for quite some time. He tries not to think about how he might as well have pulled the angel’s wings out himself. 

Cas ignores him, only stopping when Dean puts a hand against his shoulder and makes him stop. Even then, there’s an air of movement, as though Cas will start off again the second Dean lets go.

“Maybe we should let him go,” Sam says, sounding thoughtful.

“You what?” Dean knows he’s scowling. He doesn’t care.

Sam raises an eyebrow.

“Crowley got into his programming, right? Rebooted him? Maybe this is how it’s working it’s way through. Starting to…integrate.”

“You think he’s acting on some archangel knowledge? What if you’re wrong? What if he’s just lost it and we let him walk out in front of a fucking car?”

He’s more or less hissing at this point, frustration digging its nails into his throat.

“We’ll stay right with him,” Sam says, as though he’s being reasonable. “But we haven’t got anything else, Dean. You said it yourself. This is our one lead.”

And what can Dean really say to that? All those people, dying, because of them, and if Cas is following some angel coding that’ll take them to something useful…

He swears, squeezes Cas’ shoulders once, briefly, and lets go.


	19. Steps

They trail the angel down the road, stalking in his wake. 

Cas isn’t stalking. It’s clear to Dean that the angel’s drifting, pulled along by something but with no real intent of his own. It’s more the way gravity has water rolling downhill. The river doesn’t mean to end up where it does. It just goes there.

It’s not long before Sam holds his hand out to Dean, tapping at his brother’s arm.

“Keys,” Sam says.

Dean shoots him a look, quickly, before latching back onto Cas. Some part of him has this jittery feeling that the guy will vanish if he isn’t watched. If he isn’t vanishing anyway. 

“Give me the keys,” Sam says. “He’s heading to Stull. Let me get the car.”

Dean hands them over, keeps following Cas as Sam turns around and leaves, listens as the rumble of his car catches him up. 

Sam parks the Impala in front of Cas, waits for the angel to reach him. Tries to get him to sit in the back seat.

Cas shrugs Sam off and makes to walk around the car, showing no signs of hearing as the brothers tell him they’ll take him where he wants to go. Needs to go, Dean corrects, that glassy look on Cas’ face working its way into Dean’s waking nightmare. Cas has the look of someone who’ll try to dig his way through stone with his fingernails, even if all he ends up with is bloody stumps in a locked room. 

Cas ignores them.

In the end, it takes the both of them lifting the guy off his feet and folding him into the car before they can get going, and even then Dean has to hold Cas down until the car is moving. As soon as they’re moving the right way, towards Stull, the angel stops struggling. He sits up, his face blank and his eyes forward. Those lips of his are closed into a straight line, pressing together. There will be no words to explain what he’s doing, that much is clear.

Dean watches Cas the whole way, watches for any twitch or shudder or sign. All he sees is an angel, blank and resolute. 

 

**********************************

 

Cas is out of the car as soon as it slows, Dean cursing and diving after him. 

Sam is right after them, leaving the Impala with her doors hanging open as he catches up with Dean. They follow Cas from a few feet behind, follow him towards a patch of ground littered with stones. 

“What’s he back here for?” Sam asks, as though Dean had got it out of Cas in the few seconds it took to pull up the Impala.

“Maybe his archangel memories told him how to open the Cage,” Dean says, but that doesn’t sit right. Archangel Cas didn’t even know about the Cage, so how could he know to open it?

Still, Cas moves on, skirting the stones and stopping by a patch of tangled weeds. He looks down at them. 

“What’s here, Cas?” Dean asks, wanting to reach out and clap Cas on the shoulder, to ground him. He gets as far as lifting his hand, letting it hover. 

Cas speaks, then, but it’s hard to say if it’s to answer Dean.

“I was God’s eyes,” he says. “I saw. I was Witness. I was meant to watch his Fall. I will…watch.”

He sounds distant and fevered, like he’s burning up from so far away that Dean can only see the faintest of sparks from the fire. 

Before either brother can ask again, Cas holds out his hand, palm flat to the ground, and the weeds peel back. Beneath them is a…doorway, set flat in the earth. It shudders, falls open, falls inward, revealing stone steps vanishing into the darkness.

Cas moves forward.

“Hey!” Dean lunges, reaches, latches on. 

This time, Cas doesn’t flinch. Dean isn’t sure the guy knows whose hands are on him, or that anybody’s are. He does stop, but it’s more an ebb in the tide. He will move again in a moment. It’s written in every line of him.

Dean pushed round in front of his friend, ducking to try and catch Cas’ eye. He fails.

“Cas, listen. We don’t know what’s down there. Some creepy-ass steps in this place? That can’t be good.”

“I will bear Witness,” Cas says, and he takes hold of Dean, moves him to the side with a strength Dean keeps forgetting the angel has. And walks on.

Swearing, Dean goes after him, is only a step or two behind as Cas takes the first step. 

Sam is right behind him, and so Sam catches Dean as a searing heat flashes through him, sending him reeling back into his brother’s arms.

“What the fuck?” Dean hisses, too unsteady to pull away from Sam at once.

Cas walks on, already nearly below ground, and he doesn’t falter when Dean shouts him, when Sam adds his voice. He just keeps going. His head is all that is left now, then the wild strands of his hair, then nothing.

Cas is gone.


	20. Eyes

Every time Dean tries, the heat casts him back.

Sam has no better luck, rebounding from whatever force kept Dean from following Cas, biting off curses each time, his face grimmer and grimmer. More like stone.

“This is crap, Sam,” Dean bites out, holding his forearm where the latest attempt has left it blistered and red. “Why can’t we follow him?”

Sam is breathing heavily, his chest and shoulders heaving, making him even larger than he normally is. He shakes his head, but doesn’t use words. There aren’t any. Cas is just…gone. 

Dean did not need to see the angel swallowed up again, did not ever need to see him disappearing down into a place Dean could not follow. At least this time it is not water. It has not ended in an explosion of black and a ragged coat tangled in the reeds. 

It doesn’t make it much better.

“And what was all that he was spouting about bearing witness?” Dean asks, because he hasn’t anyone else to ask but Sam, and because keeping the questions in his head will come near to breaking his skull.

Sam shakes his head again, but he looks thoughtful.

“Look, Dean,” Sam says, and he sounds like he thinks Dean won’t like what he has to say, “you’re right about Cas being our lead.” He goes on over Dean’s protest that he didn’t mean it like that. “We have loads of angel lore at the bunker and you can find all kinds of crap on-line. We need to put a hold on researching the Darkness. We need to research Cas. Get ahead of this archangel thing.”

“We need to find out how to follow him wherever the Hell he is and bring him back!” Dean insists.

He pretends not to see the pitying look Sam gives him.

“We aren’t getting through that,” Sam says. “We can look into it. We can. Hell, we can stand here and try googling it on our phones, but it’s dark and it’s not like the internet will be reliable on this. Too many people hanging their hopes on their own ideas of angels.”

“So you, what, want to high-tail it back to the bunker and leave Cas in there?”

Wherever ‘there’ is. 

“I’m not saying it’s ideal-” Sam is saying, when a rumble of thunder cuts him off. 

A second peal drags their attention round in time to see the lightning. It stabs down from a clear sky, strikes at the middle of the cemetery. At Cas’ blade. 

Which explodes. 

Dean throws himself down, hands covering his head, and feels heat and electricity shoot over his back. It lasts for a lot longer than it should, a roaring, shaking thing that has Dean losing his sense of time and direction and self. He’s at the center of a whirlwind, in the middle of a storm, and he just has to stay down and cling to the damp earth. 

Finally, eventually, it is done.

Prying his hands away, Dean looks up. Trees and grass and gravestones are levelled, scorched, in a pattern radiating out from that blade. The blade itself is gone. Obliterated. 

The thunder, at least, is gone.

Sam yells something, but Dean can’t hear it. The wind has picked up, whipping at the trees, at the sky, at them. With his hands up to shield his eyes, Dean staggers to his feet and peers into the wind, his eyes streaming.

He feels his brother’s hand on his shoulder, glances up and round to see that Sam looks unhurt. That’s good. That’s very good. It a fucking miracle, but they both seem okay. 

Looking again at where the blade was, he sees something on the ground only ten feet or so beyond that patch. Something huddled and far too familiar. In its way. 

Because it looks like Cas, it really does. Except Cas is an inch or two shorter than Dean. Cas is lithe and graceful and packs a lot of power into that frame, but he’s human sized in his vessel. Human shaped. 

The shape on the ground of the cemetery at Stull is wrong, is stretched. It folds out along the dirt, something spilling away from it and warping the outline. Dean takes a step closer, trying to make it out, Sam beside him. Those shapes are mosaics, are fractured outlines that his brain can’t piece together into a whole. He wants to see Cas, but there’s more there than his friend. 

He takes another step, and another. Hears Sam gasp.

“Dean…”

But he ignores it. The closer he gets, the more sure he is that it’s Cas. But it’s… it’s also not. Or it’s more. He doesn’t know. His brain won’t hold onto it.

At first, he thinks it’s wings. And maybe it is. They are. Whatever. But they’re starched starlight and folded space, something that might be like a bird’s wing and might be the canvas sail of a ship. And there’s more than just the one pair, at that. Cas’ body, the body Dean is used to thinking of as Cas, is surrounded by these shapes. At least three pairs. No. Four? Four pairs of wings. Four tangled, sweeping, mind-numbing swathes of space.

And that’s still not it.

Dean could just about make space in his brain for a Cas with wings. Dude’s an angel, after all. It would be fucking freaky to see his actual wings, but Dean could deal. He’s seen the outlines before, of one set, at least.

This is more than wings.

There are shapes in the air, shapes sprawled along the ground, of tails or tentacles or tendrils of something. Dean can’t make them out, but they twitch and shift. And there’s space around Cas’ head, where it looks like three or four other shapes are fighting for space, a shadowed impression that something’s there. 

And through it all, through the tails and wings and what Dean is really trying not to think of as Cas’ other heads, there’s the glimmering of what he wishes he could keep seeing as stars. But one catches the light, another moves. Opens. Focuses.

They’re eyes.

Cas, this twisted, encompassing mass of him, is shot through with eyes. And they are all opening now, are all moving and focusing and latching onto Dean as he circles his friend, far out to avoid any of the almost-shapes.

He’s tasting bile and wonder on his tongue when he makes it round to Cas’ face. He reaches out and grabs at Sam, feeling the weight of all of those eyes on him, and feels his brother grip back, clutching at folds of each other’s jackets as they are watched. 

Cas’ human eyes shoot open, and they are blazing.


	21. Eye II

When Cas moves, it is the shifting of the earth itself, the movement of the universe pulling a part of itself upright. 

He gets to his knees before he hisses, every eye blazing with white-blue light, the lines of each part of him drawing taut. 

Despite the crawling horror in his gut, along his spine, Dean rushes forwards, dropping to his own knees and bracing Cas about his human shoulders. As he gets hold of the angel, the lights dim, a good half of the eyes sliding shut. Cas slumps, his forehead touching Dean’s chest and sticking there, just below Dean’s throat, the topmost hairs tickling Dean’s chin. 

“Cas? Cas? Can you hear me? What…what the fuck happened to you, man?”

Dean’s fingers feel cold and sticky. Wet. 

This close, practically inside the boundary of the weird less-than half-real appendages Cas has turned up with, he can concentrate on the human body. He can see it’s it tatters.

That beige coat is ragged, holes soaked through with…with blood and something almost black, something thick and stinking and sharp. He can see flesh through the gaping holes, flesh which is poked with wounds. Flesh which is weeping with red blood. 

Cas spasms. Light flares for an instant deep in each wound. His grace. It isn’t just the body that was hurt. It is Cas’ real body. 

Dean is surrounded by Cas’ real body. 

He knew that. He did. That knowledge seeped in as he struggled to make sense of the shapes on the ground, but this is… It’s one thing to know and another to feel it. 

“Dean.” He feels Sam land next to him. “Dean, he…”

“I know,” Dean says, his voice a rasp. “I know.”

Another spasm, another flare of light, and Cas slumps further, sinking back to the ground despite Dean’s hold on him. It galvanises movement. 

“Come on. We’ve got to get him back.”

Sam takes hold of Cas, too, manhandling him until Dean has the guy’s head and shoulders and Sam has the feet. Dean doesn’t know how Sam is processing all this, but for his part he’s doing his best to ignore the trailing drag of strange flesh that comes along with the Cas they know. He has no idea if they’ll get all of this into the car, let alone back to the bunker.

One thing’s for sure. With the angel like this, they can’t go back into the motel. 

“Maybe one of us should stay around here,” Dean says, through heaving gasps of air. “Keep an eye on anything else here.”

Sam shakes his head.

“We’re not that far. Something goes down, we can make it back. Going to take both of us.”

Dean doesn’t ask what it will take the both of them to do. Sam had to say all of that through his own gasps. There’s little to no chance Dean could get Cas into the bunker by himself, not without chopping pieces off. 

He has a wild moment of picturing doing just that, of taking one of the angel blades they have from all the deaths over the last few years, and using it to carve off all the bits that aren’t the Cas he knows. 

His back hits something hard, driving that image away. The Impala.

They have to put Cas down, lowering him as gently as they can, to get the doors open and argue in low voices about how to try and get the guy inside. Can they even squash him up? Will it hurt him more?

They have to try something, or it’ll turn to day and Cas will be sprawled on the grass and mud, clearly something beyond human, and they’ll be no closer to getting him to safety. 

In the end, Cas fills the back of the car, parts of him folded strangely, others seeming to go through each other or through parts of the car. But he’s in. In the middle of that mess is what Dean thinks of as the real Cas, his skin cut and bleeding. It’ll have to do. They need to get back to the bunker, need to get him spread out somewhere where they can take a proper look.

All of the eyes are closed now. As Dean pulls out of the cemetery again, all of the eyes are closed and there is no sign of light anywhere.


	22. Cleaning

Cas is still running dark when they get home.

This time, it is harder to move him, like he’s more solid than he was back at Stull. One of the things Dean is thinking of as a wing gets wedged inside the car, stuck up near the roof, and Dean has to crawl as far over the front seat as he can as Sam pulls from outside to get their friend unstuck. 

Finally, Cas slithers head first out of the car, landing in a heap of limbs and strangeness on the cold concrete of the garage. They pull him further from the car, to the space in the middle of the room, and Cas ends up on his back, his arms out to his side in a way that Dean fights hard not to see as reminiscent of the Crucifixion. It doesn’t help that there are wounds in each wrist, just showing where the sleeves of the coat have pushed up. 

“Dean,” Sam says.

That’s it. He doesn’t follow it up with anything else. 

“I know, Sam.”

At least, he thinks he does. They have Cas home. Again. But now they know that people are being split apart by whatever it is that Dean has unleashed by not being strong enough to stop Sam, and now Cas is this mangled thing, bleeding and twisted and sickeningly not-human. 

It’s one thing to know Cas isn’t really the shape of Jimmy Novak. It’s another thing entirely to see it. 

“Get the bandages,” Dean says, wiping a hand down his face and closing his eyes for just a moment so he doesn’t have to look at his friend. “We’ll have to try patch him up here.”

Sam disappears and Dean signs, braces himself, crosses the distance to his friend. 

Under the bunker lights, he can see Cas is covered in cuts and wounds. If the guy was human, he’d have bled out. As it is, the blood is pumping out sluggishly from some places, but that black stuff seems to be slowing it. Dean flashes back, for one horrible, gut-twisting moment, to Leviathan, but it isn’t quite the same. This feels like something real and imaginary at once. That sharp stink is a stronger, more cutting version of the tang that followed Cas back when he used to fly in and out. Something angelic. 

He wouldn’t have thought angels would bleed black. He thought the grace-bleed was their thing.

Staring isn’t going to get anything done. Tentatively, his hands angled to avoid as much of that black blood as possible, he gets hold of an edge of Cas’ coat, up near his neck, and peels it back. The shirt underneath is mesh, it’s so slashed about, and the tie comes away when Dean’s fingers brush it, the last threads snapping. The skin of Cas’ chest is only slightly better off. 

He starts when Sam reappears, the bucket he’s carrying sloshing as he sets it down next to Dean. 

“How bad is it?” Sam asks.

Dean just shakes his head.

They set to work, removing the ruined clothing, washing away the blood, the red and the black. Every so often, a flare of blue makes them both halt, but it always fizzles out without Cas stirring. Twice, an eye opens, once out on a wing, the other time on what Dean has decided is a kind of tail. Both times, the blue is cloudy and fades away before the eye can focus. 

Not that Dean can be sure of anything. They are eyes. He thinks. But they look almost like tiny, swirling galaxies when they’re open. Maybe they were looking at Dean and he just couldn’t tell. 

Cas’ human eyes stay shut, his face slack. There are a couple of nasty cuts, one along his right cheek and one across his lip, and his left eye is swollen shut, mottled by a bruise. 

Dean does his best to patch Cas up, Sam working away on the other side, and he sits back on his heels when the last bit of Cas is clean and stitched or bandaged. Probably useless. He’s clearly still an angel. Which begs the question of why he hasn’t healed up already. 

It would feel wrong to sit and not try to help, though. To do something.

Which is why, as Dean looks over his and Sam’s work, he finds his gaze sweeping along to the eye-encrusted limbs spread along the floor. A lot of them look battered, black and blue seeping from them, the blue only whenever Cas lit up. He still can’t fix his eyes on it all properly, his attention skittering away too easily and a headache forming when he tries to stay fixed on any of this angelic part of Cas. He sees enough to get that some of the eyes are slashed through. At least three look like the eye itself has been plucked from the socket, leaving a hole that grates a sense of wrongness into Dean’s mind. 

It’s all Cas. It’s all a part of Cas. Cleaning up the vessel and leaving this…it’s no good.

He meets Sam’s eyes and shrugs, getting a shrug in return, and Dean is the first one to pick up a clean cloth, dip it in water, and set to sponging down one of the wings. 

It chills him when he touches it, sucking the heat from his fingers, and he sucks in a breath through narrowly parted lips. A hiss from Sam says that he’s finding the same thing on his side. Dean sets his shoulders and pushes through it. He’s not going to die from a little bit of cold. 

It takes a lot longer to clean up these extra parts of Cas. 

By the time it’s done, Dean’s fingers have been cramping for hours and his lower back is a knot of hot pain. Which is at least something warm, because he’s shivering through his whole frame.

Sam doesn’t look a lot better, a tinge to his skin that Dean’s only seen before when his brother’s actually freezing. 

“I have no idea what we do with him now,” Dean says, his voice hushed. It’s partly because he hasn’t got the energy for more, but it’s also that it’s sunk it now, the way rainwater trickles through rock, that this is Cas he’s got under his hands. The actual, angelic Cas. 

He wonders if this is all of him, of if there’s more they can’t see.

Sam nods, even though Dean isn’t sure what his brother thinks he’s agreeing to. Maybe they should just leave Cas here, on the concrete. With how cold his real body is, the temperature can’t be a problem. And it’s not like an angel really needs to worry about a stiff back. Cas’ll probably wake up soon, anyway, and be back to his normal self, the way he usually is after he passes out like this.

Just like his usual self, with folded sails of midnight for wings, and tails like tendrils of the cosmos, and eyes like galaxies all over the fucking place. And none of the cuts have healed, yet. 

“He’s got more blood on him,” Dean says, not sure if the human blood or the black stuff is worse, still oozing out from wounds. It doesn’t matter. There’s enough of each that they could set to cleaning the angel again.

“Dean, I…” Sam sounds exhausted.

And Dean gets it. He doesn’t think he can spend any more time on this, either. He’s not sure his hands are going to function for much longer. They both need rest. They need a real lead that doesn’t just make things worse. They need to catch a break.

It just doesn’t sit right, though, to leave Cas here.

Dean lets his eyes fall closed and tilts his head back, unsure whether he’s half-ready to pray.

“We need to get him to a bed, Sam,” he says, because he knows he won’t settle until he can persuade himself that Cas is comfortable. Whatever that means. There are so many tendrils and pieces of Cas that look like they should be trailing, waving around him that Dean isn’t even sure Cas should be on land. Maybe he’d be better off in a tank full of water. “We can manage that, right?”

Sam just grunts, but he helps Dean move Cas yet again, down the stairs and into the main part of the bunker. It takes them far longer than it should do to get Cas into the room Dean set up ages ago, back when he’d first started settling in to the bunker and had thought that maybe his friend would come and stay. Cas had barely used it since, and he’d always been injured or just recovered from being dead. 

Now, the angel barely fits. He seems to have grown again, or decompressed, maybe. His vessel fits on the bed, all right, but the rest of him drapes over most of the floor, parts of some wings bunching up against the walls.

Dean’s shivering has progressed into bone deep trembling by the time they have Cas more or less comfortable, and it’s all he can do to tell his friend that he better heal himself up, that he’s needed, before crossing the hallway and falling face first onto his own bed. 

He doesn’t give much thought to the fact that black goo is still clinging to his fingers and wrists.


	23. Blades

He wakes to a throbbing chill in his hands and a high-pitched barrier of sound shaking his bed.

Angel-screaming.

Dean is out of bed, stumbling as his brain tries to coordinate sleep-fogged limbs, and at Cas’ doorway in moments, almost yelping at the pain in his hands as he braces himself on the door-frame. He nearly carried right on into the room, but the strobe-lighting and noise have him curling away, only his grip on the frame keeping him on his feet.

His eyes are watering again as he sees Sam pound down the hallway to reach him.

“What is it?” he sees his brother mouth. 

Sees, because he can’t hear anything other that screeching. He shakes his head, wincing and squinting, and grabs at Sam to urge him on. One thing’s for sure: standing out here isn’t doing anything to stop whatever this is.

As soon as he’s inside the room, he ducks, barely missing being swept off his feet by a sail-like wing, and rolls to make it past a second one that’s beating up and down, bashing into the floor as it goes. The rooms feels like it rocks with each impact. 

Sam dodges round and makes it to the other side of the bed, and together they gape at Cas. 

The angel is glowing. His eyes are open, that blue-white light spilling from them, but his whole human body is alight, seeping brilliance that looks to be growing stronger even as they stand there. Cas’ mouth is open, adding human screams to the angelic ones, but Dean can only tell when he gets really close, crouching down and taking hold of Cas’ shoulders, shaking him. He has no idea if this is a death-wish, but he has to stop this noise somehow and he has to stop whatever it is that’s hurting Cas. Unless the angel tells them what to do…

Cas spasms, his whole frame locking up and twitching. His angelic self does the same, and this time Sam is knocked aside by one of the tails, about forty eyes blinking and swirling at him as he bashes into a wall and rights himself, looking dazed. 

Moments later, the light cuts out, plunging the room into darkness, and the silence after the screaming is almost enough to count as oppressive. 

“Sam,” Dean says, needing to know his brother’s all right.

“I’m on it,” Sam says instead, and Dean hears Sam’s footsteps, a click, and light fills the room again. Normal light this time. Normal, man-made, electric light. 

The brothers stare at each other, neither one breaking the silence yet with more words, and Dean’s attention is snapped back to Cas as the angel groans. Thank fuck it’s just with his human voice this time.

“Cas. You awake? Can you hear me?” 

Dean isn’t sure what to touch. The shoulders were the best idea he had in that moment of screaming and light and thrashing movement, but now he’s all too well aware of the bare, injured flesh. In this light, and with at least a few hours gone, Cas’ body is smeared with bruises. Dean settles for patting at Cas’ forearm, which seems to be vaguely okay. There are no obvious gashes, anyway, no stitches or bandages to avoid.

Cas’ eyes flutter shut and he groans again, but it sounds like he’s trying not to. Dean has the idea that he’s trying not to be a bother, and the idea of something that’s sprawling wings and tails and God knows all over the bedroom trying to be a good house-guest is just fucking hilarious. Seriously. And Dean will have a good laugh about it once he’s sure Cas isn’t dying.

“Come on. Talk to me,” Dean orders.

At that, Cas opens his eyes. The normal two. The ones Dean’s used to seeing. He opens them and seems to have some trouble focusing them on Dean, if the way they wander about looking vague is any clue. Dean calls him again, and this time Cas manages to look at Dean. Still not clear if he’s really seeing him, though. 

“Hey. How bad are you?” Dean asks. If Cas needs something to help him heal, they need to know now.

It takes a couple of tries for the angel to get any words out, and Sam is back by the bed, his expression more troubled than it was when they were waiting for Cas to wake up the last time. Cas’ throat sounds dry and he rasps.

“Feel…strange…”

He shifts and Dean realises the guy’s trying to sit up. Despite the wounds, he changes his hold, putting his hands back on Cas’ shoulders and pushing down.

“You stay right there. You are in no fit state to be getting up. You hear me?” 

He isn’t at all sure that’s made it’s way into Cas’ brain, wherever that might be in the mass of angel and vessel filling the room. Dean’s pretty sure he’s come close to standing on parts of Cas a couple of times already, which… Yeah. He isn’t going to think about that too closely. 

“Cas. Listen. Hey, listen.” He snaps his fingers in front of Cas’ eyes until they sharpen a little. “You’re not healing. And you’ve got all this…you all over the place. What do we do?”

Cas’ head wobbles a little, even though he’s still got it on the pillow, like he can’t tell if there’s something under him or not. How does Cas even process what’s around him? Dean’s horribly aware of one of those things he’s really not wanting to think of as an extra head, looming down at him from halfway up the wall. At least those have stayed more shadows in the air than they have physical body parts, unlike the wings, which are mostly real by this point. It’s still creepy, though. Creepier still when he thinks that maybe Cas is having trouble with his head because he’s actually down at Dean, not up. 

At last, the angel rasps out another response. 

“Blade. Need…blade.”

“You…?” Dean looks at Sam again. No help there. “Sorry to tell you, but your angel blade got blasted by lighting.”

Cas frowns.

“Any…angel…blade.”

That seems to exhaust him, because his human eyes close half-way and most of the eyes along his limbs do the same, the ones that stay open dimming until they’re a lot harder to see.

“Right.” Dean says. It’s not a lot. Actually, it’s pretty crappy intelligence. Meaningless. But if there’s any chance that bringing Cas an angel blade will help, it’s got to be worth a try. Maybe the guy just needs something around that will make him feel safe. It must be odd, being a warrior and not having your weapon, especially when Cas always seemed to have had that thing on him. Almost always. 

He glances at Sam, his eyebrows raised, and sees his brother get the message.

After that, it’s just Dean in the room with a Cas who’s giving every sign of drifting into something like sleep. It’s all too real, then, that he’s more or less surrounded by his best friend. He takes a quick look at some of the parts he’s being calling tails. At least one of them looks to have suckers along it. He really doesn’t want to have to rename it a tentacle. 

“I thought you guys were meant to be all feathers and harps,” he mutters, that pulse of worry still thrumming under his skin as he does his best not to think too much about which creature any particular part of Cas looks like it comes from. “Why’d you have tentacles, man?”

Cas’ voice makes him jump. He was a bit took convinced the guy was sleeping.

“Manifest,” the angel says, and it’s faint. “Celestial…energy made…manifest.”

Like that answers anything.

Dean opens and closes his mouth. At least trying to get his head around this stops him agonising quite so much about how those injuries are going nowhere fast. It’s better than asking Cas if he’s dying. Surely, he’d say it he was dying. Right? 

Before he can get another question lined up in his head, Dean hears Sam on his way back, and almost smiles in relief when his brother walks in with a collection of angel blades.

The change in Cas is immediate.

Every eye blinks open. Blue streams from each one, and a tail…not a tentacle, even if it might, does, have suckers…reaches for the weapons in Sam’s arms.

Sam, his eyes widening, hands the first blade over, his expression a lot more fascinated than it has any right to be as the limb coils around the silver sword and lifts it to the bed, where Cas has his human hand out. The sword drops into his right hand and a shudder runs through Cas’ whole body.

He seems to be studying it, peering at it without moving his head from the pillow. He doesn’t need to. A pair of wings lift instead, and Dean steps aside sharply to avoid being hit. The eyes along each wing latch onto the sword.

Cas sighs.

“Not this…one,” he says. 

And the tentacle…damn it, it is a tentacle a lot more than it’s a tail…takes the next blade from Sam.

They got through five blades before Cas brightens, struggling upright no matter what Dean says, and props himself against the headboard. He holds the blade out to Dean as though it answers some question. When Dean doesn’t do anything but stare, Cas sighs again, his breath hitching a bit. It makes Dean wonder about internal damage. It’s not really something they’ve had to think about with Cas. Not normally. 

“This blade is…the sort I need,” he says. “Bring…me others like…this.”

Which would be great, except it looks just like all the others to Dean. 

“Cas,” Sam says. “They’re all the same. What’s special about this one?”

“I made it,” Cas says. “Cover your eyes.”

And he grips the blade with both hands, twisting as every eye blazes again with light. Dean gets his hands up just in time as the blade disintegrates into pure white pain.


	24. All

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short one. 
> 
> I may resort this once it's done and put some chapters together, but posting this way is keeping me going, so I hope you don't mind too much.

The glow doesn’t quite fade. 

When the light passes, when Dean can peel his palms from over his eyes, Cas is gasping on the bed like he’s been injected with something illegal, a look of near ecstasy on his human face, a faint shimmer of white-blue coating his skin, his hair. His eyes are otherworldly. 

“Cas?”

The angel doesn’t respond, just sits on the bed, his hands up as though he’s touching something in mid-air that Dean can’t see. Maybe he is. The rest of him, the star-sail wings and trailing tentacles and the shadowed suggestions of heads, are equally still, but they’re no longer draped. No. Now, they’re poised, the wings half-furled so that they brush the walls and the tentacles making sine waves in the air. 

“Cas? You okay? Did that…hurt you more?”

Except, now that he looks, Dean sees the worst wounds have faded. The lesser wounds have vanished entirely. Whatever the fuck that was, it’s helped. 

Cas lowers his hands, a graceful sinking to his lap. One wing unfolds, dwarfing Dean as it fills the space behind him, and Cas turns his head, fluidly, inhumanly, to stare at Dean. He doesn’t speak. Just stares. Dean becomes aware of pressure building behind his eyes, a cold, needling pain that makes him think of glass shattering outwards. 

“Cas,” he grits out, red and black flaring behind his eyes as the sensation increases. “Cas, whatever you’re doing… Stop it.”

The pressure drops.

Darting a look at Sam, Dean sees his brother grimacing and rubbing at his temple. He looks a question and gets a nod in return, but Sam has a set look to his jaw. Maybe pain. Maybe something else. Dean just hopes it isn’t a plan to use Cas’ new angel form before they have a chance to work out what’s going on. Taking action is great. Hell, he’s a taking action guy himself. Rushing in without thinking about the consequences, though… 

He flashes back to that waitress, to Susie, split open at the seems on the diner floor.

Clearing his throat, he tries a smile. It comes out tight and aching, but it’s the best he can do.

“You good?” he asks Cas, as though his best friend hasn’t transformed into something from a B-movie. As though it doesn’t give Dean a dizzying sense of vertigo just to look at him. 

There’s a pause, like Cas is having to remember how to speak.

“I am…better than I was,” Cas says, at last, each word slow and careful. It gives the impression that Cas is balancing something, somewhere in his head, like something will overflow and flood the room if he isn’t fully in control. 

“Mind telling us what that was?” Dean tries next. 

He’d move to stand by Sam, but the coils that were lying along the floor are up anywhere between knee-height and shoulder-height, now, forming a barrier between them. 

“Bring me more blades like that one,” Cas says. “And I will show you.”

Sam speaks up, the steely resolve in his voice filed down so you could almost miss it. It’s still there, though. Dean’s starting to wonder if it will ever go.

“We don’t know what you’re looking for, Cas,” he says. “That one didn’t look any different to me.”

Lights flare all along Cas, a brief, glaring pulse. His voice echoes when he speaks again, a deep bass note running under it.

“Then bring them all.”

“All the blades in the bunker?” Dean asks. Because, yeah, they have a few, but Sam already brought a lot of them in here.

“All of the blades on Earth and in Heaven,” Cas states. “I need my blades. Summon the angels. Instruct them to give up their weapons.”

Dean’s pulse is quick and strong, some part of him gearing up for a fight. Which is ridiculous. But Cas sounds like he’s laying out battle plans.

“They aren’t just going to give up their blades, Cas,” he says. “And I’m far from certain that Hannah will let any angels near you. Or us.” 

Sam has filled Dean in on Hannah, on the new vessel. And Cas’ warm reaction to it. Dean knows that, despite the affection between them, Hannah still banned Cas from heaven. He can’t imagine she’ll just let the angels answer his summons now.

“Hannah.” Cas says the name thoughtfully, as though caressing it. “Hannah will do what must be done to protect Heaven. To protect creation.”

“You really think you or me, or Sam, will have any sway there, after the break-in you pulled? They ain’t gonna listen to you, Cas. I’m telling you, you want those blades, you’re gonna have to fight more of your brothers and sisters. You really want that?” Because Dean has seen how it cuts Cas, to hurt his siblings. 

“If they will not heed the summons,” Cas says, still with that resonance in his words, “then they will be made to obey. I will have my blades. I will have myself. Follow my orders, Michael-Sword. Bring them all.”


	25. Hannah

Dean finds himself standing, at midnight, in a field not far from the bunker, dark clouds scudding across the sky and making inkblot shadows of everything. 

He’s left Sam back at the bunker with Cas, who’s found two more swords that he claims are his in their collection: two more flares of light, each with Cas pulsing with more power, his angelic form more present, more…vivid. Dean’s thankful Cas’ heads have stayed faded out. The eyes on the rest of him are more than enough. 

But two swords aren’t enough. 

On Cas’ orders, and they are orders, Dean’s out in this field with the chill night air ruffling through his hair and his jacket zipped up to his chin, waiting for an angel to answer his call. It’s not the call he’s used to. Cas has written out the unfamiliar words, in that strange language he muttered during his reset, and Dean’s tongue has stumbled and tangled on them. Still, he’s worked his way through them, three times over, staring up into that dark sky. 

Cas has told him it is necessary that there is space for this summons. Dean doesn’t like to think what that means. 

A soft explosion shimmers through the field, a throbbing shift in pressure that runs up through Dean’s feet and into his body. Around him, the grass ripples. It takes a few moments, but he hears the trees at the edges of the field rustling as the blast hits them. There’s no fire, or shrapnel, or anything other than that pressure, that sound.

And a figure standing nearby. A man with a warm face and calm, collected stance. 

“Hannah?” Dean asks. At her nod, he takes a few steps closer, until he’s more comfortable with the distance. He doesn’t want to feel he’s shouting across at her. Doesn’t want this to feel like a confrontation. “Cas asked me to call you.”

Hannah regards him, and it’s a swelling memory of all the times Cas looked at him, those first months. 

“That wasn’t a request you sent, Dean,” she says, but the note of censure is quiet. Non-aggressive. “That was an order the likes of which we haven’t heard in so long we had forgotten it. An order from an archangel. It has sent shock-waves through heaven, and we didn’t even fully understand it. Only that one of us had to be here.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Yeah. It’s been a bit of a shock all round. But look, Cas needs something. It’s…it’s important.”

“I imagine it is,” Hannah says. She sounds almost fond. “It always is with Castiel. Tell me, what problem of yours is he trying to solve this time?”

The thing is, she doesn’t even sound bitter. She’s sort of understanding. Accepting. Regretful. 

“It’s not-” He cuts himself off. 

He can’t say it’s not a problem of his, because who else can be blamed for this, really? Sam? Sure. Sam has to shoulder blame, here. But Sam didn’t take the Mark. Sam didn’t beat Cas half to death and walk out, warning that his family stayed away from him so all they had left to do was sneak around behind his back. 

It was still wrong, what they did. Still wrong. He might never entirely forgive that it happened, but he’s got to find a way to move forward, and hashing it over now won’t help. 

“Look,” he tries, “there’s something cosmically bad going on, and Cas, well, he’s taken it to a whole new level. And he needs angel blades.” He can’t think how else to do this, other than the blurt it out and see how it settles. “He needs all the angel blades that are his.”

Hannah’s brow creases.

“Each angel only has one blade,” she says. 

“Not according to Cas.”

They stand in silence for a time. Dean has no idea how long. Hannah has a look on her face that says she’s working through something, that she isn’t going to be rushed. Dean gives her time. It’s not like he has any other lead to rush off to. 

Finally, Hannah steps even closer, tilting her head to look up at him. Her eyes are different, no longer the brilliant, clear colour from before, but somehow they’re still the same. He wonders if this is what it would be like with Cas, if he changed vessel, if Dean would still look at his friend and see familiar eyes, no matter the actual shape or colour.

“Take me to Castiel,” Hannah says, and Dean can see there’s no shifting her on this. 

 

***************************************************

 

It’s possible to get used to almost anything. To an extent, it is. Dean doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t falter at the sight of Castiel. It’s obvious in the way Hannah stiffens and stops in the doorway to the library that she was not expecting this.

Cas moved to the library between the third and fourth blade, almost filling the space, despite the fact that the space is so much larger than the bedroom he’s been in. It’s like he’s expanded to fit. Or almost fit. One pinion brushes the ceiling as he stands and stares back at Hannah, who still isn’t moving. 

“She wanted to see you,” Dean says, as though Cas will think there is any other reason for Hannah to be here. “To hear what you mean about these blades.”

He tries not to make that sound so much like he’s handing the problem over to Cas, though he knows that’s the case. Dean has enough problems to cope with. Let Cas sort out Hannah. 

“Castiel,” Hannah says, but she sounds very close to questioning. There’s a tremour in the name, almost as though she wants to be corrected. When Cas just keeps staring at her, all of those galaxy eyes open and glowing, because they glow all the time now, Hannah lifts her head. It’s a short, sharp movement, like a recoil. Like she’s been hit. “Castiel,” she goes on, “what’s happened to you?”

Her words are careful, a tucked and pleated set of sounds meant to avoid disruption. That’s what is sounds like. Dean can’t read this face even as well as he can read her last one, but the tension round her eyes, the way they widen and gleam, makes him wonder what she sees when she looks at Dean’s angel. 

Cas narrows his eyes. Just his human ones. The rest remain open and staring.

“I have awoken.” He says it like it’s an answer, like she should have to ask anything else. 

A wing folds, dips, curves towards Hannah. Dean feels the draught of air as it passes, sees her close her eyes as the fractal night in that limb caresses her cheek, her shoulder. She shivers. 

“You will bring me every angel blade I made,” Cas says, his voice soft and unyielding. She twitches, opens her mouth, and he speaks over her. “You will know them.”

Hannah gasps. It takes Dean a second to notice it, the trickle of light seeping from the wing into Hannah. Her eyes open, glowing the same colour as Cas’, despite her irises being brown, now. He feels his fingers curl, itching to pull her away from that wing. He isn’t sure who he’s trying to protect, who he wants to keep from whom. 

Abruptly, Cas’ wing pulls back, and the other angel sways, a blank look of shock on her face. 

“You will know them,” Cas says, and it is a dismissal. This angel who he fought with, fought against, helped and cared for, is being sent away with a task. There’s no warmth. Only expectation of a job done.

Dean is not reassured by the way Hannah looks at Cas then. She looks at him as though seeing something alien and overwhelming. She looks at him as though Cas is not a creature she knows.


	26. Flight

It’s almost a relief to get a call from Jodie.

She demands to know what they have on death by rupture, on death by veins of darkness spreading through flesh. Dean tells her, spilling shame and guilt over the phone. She’s quiet when he finishes. At last, she asks whether he’s had chance to examine a body.

Cas insists on coming. 

“No way,” Dean says, hand chopping through the air to cut short any disagreement. “You are not tagging along to see Jodie.”

“I must gather information,” Cas says. 

Dean is surrounded. He stands on a clear patch of floor, wings and limbs and eyes all about him, and he tries to pretend he’s just meeting his friend’s eyes, that the rest is background. 

“No. For one thing, you won’t even fit in the damned car. Not now. Not anymore.” Maybe never again. Cas hasn’t exactly broken out the weekly updates on how this manifestation thing works. “You stay put. Hannah might be back with those blades. You can level up again, get ready to beat the boss.”

“I must gather information,” Cas says. 

Cas has always been alien, but now he’s the mountain against which waves break. He’s the deep surge in the sea. He’s something Dean can’t explain and isn’t sure he wants to. 

“You won’t fit in the car, Cas,” he says. It’s a testament to his years of pulling off one scam or another that nothing of the wavering he feels shows in his voice. 

Those star-cluster eyes narrow. All of them. A limb behind Dean shifts. He doesn’t know which one, but he hears it slither and tap against the floor by his heels.

“You forget, I am not the reduced, wrung out creature you have been used to these past years,” Cas says, and the bite in that is silver blades and burning Grace, coated in calm. “I have no need of your car. It is…confining.”

Dean sees the glow build up in the eyes, along the wings. He feels a rush of cold heat from the limb behind him. He doesn’t move fast enough to avoid that limb catching him, tangling him up. He certainly doesn’t move fast enough to avoid being dragged towards Cas.

He’s within a foot of the angel’s vessel when the light flares. The room spasms, contracting, compressing. Or maybe it’s Dean. His bones feel tight, twisted, and his vision whites out. The only thing he’s fully aware of is the burning presence of Cas. 

Everything else is gone.


	27. Landing

“Dean?”

It’s Jodie’s voice. It’s Jodie’s voice and she sounds confused. Worried. 

He tries to answer her, but the words stick to the walls of his throat and he chokes on them.

“Dean! Hang on. I’m coming.”

The sound of feet hitting dirt carries her voice closer, and then something hits the ground by his head. He manages to force his eyes open enough to see knees, dressed in blue. Denim. Hands touch his face, one settling on his cheek and the other cradling his forehead where it’s pressed against cold and damp. Earth. He’s lying on the ground, outside, with his head on the ground. 

He moves, despite Jodie’s noise of protest, and gets his arms under himself enough to push up and see where he is. A flowerbed. Moist, dark earth clings to his right hand, clumps of it attached to the knuckles, to the joints. He feels an irritation on his face and knows earth is sticking there, too. 

Jodie’s hands slide to his shoulders, offering support. He lets her hold on. 

“I spoke to you half an hour ago,” Jodie says. “How in the hell are you here already? You learn how to fly?”

Dean laughs. It’s sucked away by the dark air around him. He hadn’t even realised it was so late. The words are still sticky and thick, and it takes three tries before he hacks them out at Jodie’s feet.

“Not me. Cas.”

“The angel?” Jodie still sounds unsure, the way she was when they first mentioned angels to her, but she doesn’t waste time on it. “Well, if you’re here, you should come inside. Get you cleaned up. We can swing by the morgue first thing.”

He lets her help him up, stands still as she swipes at him, knocking off clumps of dark, damp earth. 

“So how does it work? Does he drop you off and come by to pick you up later?” Jodie asks, glancing up at him as she pats another parts of his arm clean. 

“What?” He feels his face crease.

Because it’s a good question. As far as he can work out, Cas has dropped him here, without permission and without warning, but he has no idea where the guy is now.

He sees the blue light behind Jodie, meters behind Jodie, just before he sees her eyes widen, crawling disquiet filling them as her head tilts back. And back. Her hands stop their patting, her fingers digging in to Dean’s sleeve.

“Dean,” she breathes. “Dean, what…?”

That slithering, heavy sensation behind him is enough, but he turns anyway. Blue-white lights scatters across the garden, filling the space. There are more than there should be. More than there were in the bunker. Cas has expanded again, it seems.

Now, they rival the night sky.

Dean realises the lights rise higher than he is used to. He tips back his head, staring up, feeling Jodie’s grip on him. He’s glad of it. Cas has loomed before, back when Dean first knew him and the angel was strange and dangerous to him, but now he towers. 

Something in Dean’s gut crawls and slinks, wanting out, wanting away. He grinds his heels into the dirt, stays where he is. It’s just Cas. It’s just Cas.

“Cut out the light-show, Man,” Dean says. “Quit scaring Jodie.”

Half the lights vanish. The others dip and move, creating an unpleasant sense that Cas is restless. 

“Is that…is that him?” Jodie asks. “You never mentioned he was…”

Dean isn’t sure what she was going to put in that space. A monster? A galaxy of twisting lights? Something out of the abyss? 

“He’s going through something,” Dean says. “Cas, come out of the dark and say hi properly. Come on, you know how to speak to people.”

When Cas steps forwards, his human form coalescing out of the darkness, Jodie’s hand clenches and releases, as though she’s pushed off from the edge. She takes a step away from Dean and straightens. Pride swells in Dean’s chest. Jodie’s never been one to be shaken for long, not to the point where she can’t snap right back to being herself. 

“Hi there,” Jodie says. “I’d say welcome, but you seem to be making yourself at home on my lawn as it is.”

Cas tilts his head. That light in his eyes shines in the dark, brighter in some ways than the multitude of eyes around him. No. Not around. On the rest of him. The image swirls, adjusting itself in Dean’s mind until he decides the higher lights are on the wings, which must be spread out and up, all of them. The lights around them all, along the ground and behind Dean and Jodie, must be the tentacles. It’s hard to make out in this light, but Cas seems twice the size he was just minutes ago. At least twice the size. 

His voice has more layers to it, as well, harmonics Dean can’t quite make out.

“I must see these bodies. You will take me to them.”

“Cas, manners!” Dean snaps. 

Old habits die hard, and Dean’s spent years growing to think of Cas as an ally, as a friend, as someone he can chastise and order and tease. Thinking of him as something to be wary of is new. As the angel snaps his gaze to Dean, it’s clear that thinking needs adjusting. 

Cas regards Dean for a long moments, until Dean feels shriveled under the weight and heat of it, before his gaze slides back to Jodie as though Dean didn’t speak. 

“You will take me to the body,” he says.

Jodie nods.


	28. Intelligence

The morgue is quiet. Shadowed.

“You sure this can’t wait until morning?” Jodie asks, rounding the corner of a cabinet and flicking on the lights. 

Dean shakes his head.

“Did he sound like it could wait?”

Jodie makes a noise that could mean anything. 

“What? You think we should have said no to him?” Dean asks. Which, yeah. Dean has said no to Cas before. Plenty of times. Just not when the guy was something out of Lovecraft. Or rather, he’d tried, and it seemed this version of Cas was not into hearing the word. 

“I’m wondering how something the size of a ferris wheel is going to make it into this room,” Jodie says.

“Come on, Jodie. He’s not that big.”

“Not far off,” she says. “Look, Dean, I’m not doubting you, here. I’m really not. You say the…angel’s a friend,” and her tongue stumbles only slightly on that, “and I believe you, but I swear you told me he looked human. What gives?”

“There was an incident with a sword and a graveyard.” At Jodie’s raised eyebrows he shrugs. “Might have been something about Lucifer’s Cage and a bolt of lightning, too. I’m not all that clear on the detail, and he won’t say.”

And it’s true. Dean’s asked. Sam’s asked. Sam’s demanded, in that steely, flint-eyes way he has when he’s focused, which is most of the time right now. Cas has refused to say more than it’s a manifestation of celestial energy. Dean always pictured energy with fewer eyes. 

“He’s on our side,” Dean says, because Cas is. Usually. Even when he isn’t, he thinks he’s doing the right thing. Dean has to wonder, though, what exactly the right thing seems like to a creature that could take on Godzilla. 

Before he has time to say anything else, there’s a flash of light and Cas is in the room. Apparently, flitting about comes with a light-show, now. 

The wings and eyes and everything else arrive, too, but they’re curled up, held in check. Dean can’t decide if Cas has shrunk himself down or if he’s just really good at pulling in on himself, but he fits. Just about. Jodie has enough space to pull the body out and let Dean squeeze in beside her, one of Cas’ limbs hovering disturbingly above the body.

“I can’t see, Cas,” Dean says. Snaps, really. 

He thinks about batting the limb away, but the thought of touching it when he doesn’t have to is… Well. He’ll just wait.

The limb shifts, rippling along its length as the eyes blink open and shut, and Dean turns his head to see what he thinks of as the actual Cas standing stock still, a glazed, blank look on his face. His eyes are not seeming to look at anything. Cas is seeing through this limb, Dean realises. It’s freakier than it should be, with everything he’s seen in his life. 

That weird humming starts up, setting Dean’s teeth on edge, and Jodie clamps her hands over her ears.

“Cas!” Dean says. “Use your mouth. You human mouth!” Because he doesn’t want to know if there’s another mouth on Cas, or what it might look like. 

The whining stops. 

“It’s the Darkness,” Cas says. 

Dean swears. He was sure it was, but it’s still chilling to hear Cas say it. 

“You got anything more than that?” he asks, once it becomes clear Cas has stopped. “Because I thought you said you were needing to gather intelligence, not just state the obvious.”

Jodie shifts next to him, shooting him a look, and Dean grimaces. So he can’t quite work out how to be with this monstrous Cas. It’s not like there’s a guidebook. And Cas hasn’t smited him yet. 

Rustling fills the room, and Dean almost shuts his eyes as Cas moves, every limb and wing shifting about, realigning. Cas’ human body turns more fully to face Dean, his eyes waking up and filling with light. He twists his head a little, in a way that makes Dean want to find a reset button on Cas and push it, get him back to being the way he was a year ago. Two years. At whatever point it was that the guy was good enough at interacting with humans for Dean to call him friend but before the point his contact with the Winchesters had put him through all kinds of cosmic wringers. 

“These are lightning strikes, of a sort,” the angel says. Archangel. Dean has got to start thinking of him like that. Except he hasn’t exactly pulled out the archangel spiel since the wings appeared. “The Darkness is looking for places to ground itself.”

“It’s looking in people? You telling me it’s going to take over people?”

Dean has had his fill of monsters looking like people, taking over people, so Dean has to spend most of his time killing his own kind to get at the evil. 

“No.” Cas sounds thoughtful, though the way his voice thrums and echoes makes it harder to pick up on that than it used to be. “Not as a demon would.”

Or an angel, but Cas doesn’t say that. Dean hasn’t been able to make out how much of the mind in this creature is his Cas, with his memories of the last few years, and how much is the ancient, out-of-date memory of the archangel. Some of his Cas has to be in there, with the things he has mentioned knowing. 

His guilt seems to be gone, though. Dean has picked up not one iota of guilt over anything Cas has done, or over humans dying, especially. Not even much regret. It’s just a fact, to this Cas. Something to factor in to the gathering of information. 

“Then what?” Jodie asks. “What do we have to be on the look out for? How do we stop it?”

“I’m not sure,” Cas says. The limbs ripple again. Confusion. Dean’s sure that’s it. And…embarrassment? Is Cas embarrassed he doesn’t have an answer? “I’m not sure what you look for, other than more humans like this.”

“It’s too late by then,” Dean says. “By then, they’re already dead.”

“Yes,” Cas says. “It may not just be humans.”

Light flares again, and Cas is gone. 

“Helpful, isn’t he?” Jodie says, her tone wry. She slides the body away, checks with Dean if he wants to see another one. Slides that out.

Dean takes his time. It’s not like he can hightail it home as soon as he’s done. He’s called Sam, but his brother’s refusing to leave his research at the bunker unless he has to, so Dean might as well wait and see if Cas turns up to take him home. If not, he can borrow a car. 

In the meantime, he does his best to look for any extra information on the victims, but all he can see are those cracks in the skin, cracks that have rippled through them and split them apart. 

He signs and signals to Jodie that he’s done. 

“You’ve got no more idea than I have, have you?” she asks, and pats him on the shoulder when he shakes his head. “We’ll get there. We always do.”

It’s later, when Dean is sitting in her kitchen, drinking a beer he doesn’t want, that he wonders if that’s true. All this time, haven’t they just been tilting from one disaster to another? Haven’t they just been trading one sure death for another, worse one, a bit further down the line? Maybe this time is when they’ve finally tipped right over the edge, taking the whole world with them. 

He’s still thinking that when Cas erupts onto the lawn outside, his limbs and wings flailing, half of his eyes dark, something huge and grotesque landing beside him.


	29. Shot

Dean’s hit by the stench as soon as he gets the back door open, Jodie’s footsteps on the house stairs behind him telling him she’s on her way. 

It reeks. 

Covering his mouth, Dean rushes to Cas, having to stop and stare about at the bottom of the porch steps before making out the smaller lump that’s Cas’ vessel. It’s not moving. None of Cas is moving. The eyes that are still alight are all the sign he has that Cas is still living, but that’s surely enough. Their eerie glow must be lit by Cas’ Grace. 

“Cas!”

He trips over a limb, draped over the last step with its suckers turned up to the sky, catching himself just before he tilts headfirst at the ground. With a tight grip on the stair-rails and his heart hammering, he stares wide-eyed at the tentacle. In the days since Cas turned into this…this, he’s never seen one of these limbs lying with its underside turned up. It isn’t even twitching.

Dean pushes himself away from the stairs and leaps the next part of angel in his path, clearing the edge of a wing and skidding past folds of skin that snatch away what little light exists in the night. Cas’ vessel is half-way down the lawn, and Dean’s panting when he reaches it. 

The grass is wet. It soaks damp patches into his jeans. He ignores them.

“Cas?” 

He hesitates to touch his friend. Cas isn’t the same and touching him doesn’t come as easily as it did. There’s that creeping sense of something alien, a sensation he hasn’t had around Cas in years, up until this. Even when the guy was beating Dean bloody back in that crypt, or further back, when his face twisted and oozed and spawned Leviathan, he was still Cas. More or less. Now, it is more and less. Dean has never been so aware of how massive Cas was, of how little he has in common with Dean. It’s wrong, that he could seem more like Cas when he was filled with a multitude of ancient monsters than he does when filled only with himself. 

“How is he?”

Jodie’s voice reaches him just as his hand meets Cas’ shoulder, gripping the meat and bone of his friend’s human body. Cas is soaking wet. And cold. 

“He’s freezing,” Dean says, glancing up at Jodie as she makes it round the last fold of wing. “I have no idea where he’s been.”

“I think I might have some idea,” Jodie says.

She isn’t looking at Cas, her gaze travelling round the garden, and Dean twists his head, despite his worry, to see what’s caught her attention. That stench. Of course.

“Is that a whale?” he asks, his voice hoarse. 

“Looks like,” Jodie says. She sounds calm, but Dean can see the way her shoulders are tense, the way her back’s ramrod straight and her hand hovers near her hip, as though expecting to find a gun. “Why’d you think he got the urge to go fishing?”

Dean tightened his hold on Cas for a moment, and lets go. Standing, he stalks toward the whale, suspicion trickling, chilly and sickening, into his mind. He doesn’t need to get too much closer before a break in the clouds uncovers the moon and he sees it. 

Dark cracks fissure the whale’s body.

“He said it might not just be humans,” Dean says. 

“That’s what he said?” Jodie asks. “You get him better than I do.”

Dean doesn’t bother to reply. Of course he gets Cas better. He’s always got Cas better than most anybody else has. Besides, the whale’s a bigger issue right now. At least it’s not one of the giant ones. For something to find on a lawn, it’s gigantic, preposterous in its size, but it’s nothing compared to how big a lot of whales are. Dean isn’t sure what kind it is, and it’s made harder to know by the way the fissures have broken up the body, far worse than on the humans he’s seen. Perhaps having more mass to work with just intensified things. 

“You got any idea how we get that off my lawn?” Jodie asks after a while.

Dean turns back to her, noting the pale sheen to her skin. She’s holding up well, which is no surprise, but this is far past what anyone should have to deal with. 

“Not a clue,” he says, aiming for levity and missing. “I’m still working on getting a Seraph out of my home.”

Something twists in his chest as he says that. Even joking, he feels the wrongness of it. A flash of blue eyes, large with hurt and confusion, staring up at him is more than enough to make him wish the words back. 

“We should get him inside,” Jodie says. “Before one of the neighbours sees. Mind you, I suppose unless we can get rid of the whale there are going to be questions anyway.”

“Just a few.”

Leaving the whale to continue rotting and breaking, Dean goes back to Cas and kneels beside him. The skin of his vessel is clammy, a sense of something thrumming under the skin at least providing further proof that Cas is still with him. 

“Do you see that?” Jodie asks, and Dean follows her pointing finger to a patch on Cas’ neck, disappearing under his collar. A patch that could be some sort of injury.

It’s hard to make out, and Dean turns Cas’ head to the side, exposing the long line of his neck, to get a better look. 

“Fuck.”

It isn’t just the whale that’s shot through with Darkness.


	30. Poison

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have two tumblrs. One is burningtea. The other is humanformdragon. The tea account is a fic and Destiel side-blog, but I am doing my usual thing and blogging that stuff on my main tumblr in any case, so it seems a bit daft not to say. If anyone wants to come and see me on tumblr, that's where I am.

Dean screams until his throat is ragged.

“Hannah! Hannah, get yourself down here! Cas is hurt!”

But Hannah doesn’t arrive. 

Instead, Jodie pulls him away, bundles him into the house and pulls his hands into the brighter patch of light over the kitchen table. She searches his fingers, his palms, his wrist, a frown creasing her brow.

“What?” Dean asks, only just aware that he’s shaking, that he’s been shaking since he saw that dark line snaking down Cas’ neck, over his throat, and under the white fabric of his shirt. He isn’t sure why he’s let Jodie drag him away from Cas. He needs to get back out there, to help. “What is it?”

“You touched him,” Jodie says, curt and business-like.

And Dean understands.

“I don’t think it works like that,” he says. “I don’t think it’s contagious.”

Still holding his hands in a vice-like grip, Jodie looks up at him, her eyes focused the way a parents gets when their kid is hurt. 

“You sure about that? He came back with that whale and now it’s got him. You said it yourself, Dean. We don’t know enough about this to know anything.”

Did he say that? Probably. He vaguely remembers something like that being said, back in the morgue, after Cas vanished. Still, from the way Susie the waitress reacted, he imagines those lines feel like acid eating into your skin, and he doesn’t feel anything.

“Jodie, I’m fine. It didn’t get me. We need to get back out there and help Cas.”

“You really think you can do anything for that creature?”

Dean pulls his hands out of Jodie’s grasp. He steps away, swinging round to head back out into the night, whether there’s anything he can realistically do or not. If it’s the worst, if Cas is about to split apart in front of him, a slower version of the time back when Lucifer tore the angel apart, then Dean will at least be there to bear witness. Cas won’t die alone.

“Dean, I didn’t mean…”

Jodie’s words trail off. Dean doesn’t ask her to go on. He pushes back out through the door, his eyes stinging. It’s being hit with that stench again. That’s what’s making his eyes water. Just that. 

Behind him, he hears the door bang, hears footsteps coming to the edge of the porch. Dean ignores them. 

He crouches at the bottom of the stairs, next to that tentacle with its suckers turned up, and makes himself look at it properly for the first time since he cleaned Cas up back in the bunker, back when he was covered in black goo. A chill runs through him as he wonder if that was how the Darkness got into Cas. Maybe it was in the lightning strike, and it’s been lying dormant in his friend all this time. 

Sure enough, there are fissures running along the limb, tree-root patterns writhing along the meat of it, the edges cracked and burnt. One eye is cut right through, the ones around it completely dark. 

“What’s happened to you, Man?” Dean whispers. 

He’s crouching with his hands on his knees, not able to close that distance when it means admitting that this alien thing is part of Cas. Castiel. It’s easier to think of him by his full name when confronted with such evidence of being another species. 

One of the eyes which still has light in it shifts. Just one, amongst hundreds. The lights in it spiral, contracting and turning to focus on Dean. 

“You still in there, Cas?” he asks. Stupid question, but he isn’t sure of anything right now. At a brief, subdued flaring of light, he lifts his hand from his right knee, holds it out in the air between them. “I… I don’t know how to help you. I can’t even drag you to a bed and leave you to sleep it off.”

“We have to get him somewhere,” Jodie says. Her voice is strained, like she doesn’t want to say it, but that doesn’t a lot when she’s still ahead and let the words out.

“Yeah?” Dean knows he’s being harsh. Doesn’t care. “You want to get the trash off your lawn?”

“I want to get the angelic creature and the dead whale off my lawn before the whole neighbourhood decides it’s a sightseeing show!” 

The silence after that is deep. Dean finds himself staring right back at that one angelic eye of Cas’, watches as it swirls slowly, barely active. 

“What exactly do you suggest?”

It turns out Jodie knows people with trucks. And with tractors. And with ropes. It turns out some of those are people she’s helped out over the last few years, people who can be trusted, if not to ask no questions at the sight that greets them, then at least to ask them in the privacy of their own heads, and to keep them there.

Dean rings Sam as Jodie’s friends survey the mess in the garden, but Sam doesn’t answer. He doesn’t answer the next time, either, or the one after that. All Dean can do is wait and hope his brother picks up soon. All he can do is watch as, over long hours, other people haul Cas about. 

Dean paces as two burly men and a burly woman load Cas onto a the flat bed of a truck, his many wings folded around him. They wear work-gloves, long sleeves, and take care not to touch him with their skin. One tentacle slips over the edge of the truck and Dean chokes down something that is not a sob as Hank, the older guy with a bushy grey beard, pushed it in to join the rest of Dean’s friend. 

The others are working on the whale. He doesn’t know how the neighbours are staying asleep at the sounds. Maybe they think tree-felling is going on. 

It’s loud and it stinks, but before the dawn arrives the worst of the evidence is gone. 

Dean still can’t quite bring himself to look at Jodie as she bangs on the side of the truck and it sets off. It cuts at Dean to see Cas being driven off on his own, but he can’t fit in the truck-bed with him, not without sitting on the guy, and there’s no room in the cab. He supposes it says something about he’s handling this that he hasn’t insisted someone else gets out. 

“I’m going to follow him,” Dean says, taking off for the house before Jodie can say anything. 

He hears her trailing after him, exchanging quiet words with some of the people who’ve come by to help. He wonders if Jodie will tell them everything, tell them to watch out for the Darkness. He’s not sure it’ll do any good, either way.

Before she can think to cut the conversation short and catch him, Dean bolts upstairs and grabs his keys and duffel from the room Jodie gave him to sleep in, the one he barely set foot in. The truck with Cas in is moving slowly, a tarpaulin pulled over its cargo, and Dean wants to catch up to it. 

A bang on the door stops him.

Jodie hasn’t mentioned expecting anyone else.

When he pulls the door open, he feels his shoulders tense up.

“Hannah. I called you hours ago. Had something better to do?”

Hannah looks at him with such compassion that he wants to shut the door in her face. 

“It’s good to know that you care for him, too,” she says, as though that’s an answer to anything. “You forget, Dean, our wings are damaged. I had to arrange a way to reach you.”

“You turned up pretty quick back at the bunker.”

“I was summoned. It pulled me there, once I let it. Castiel sent no summons this time.”

Dean curses. He could have said those words again. He still has them written down. Somewhere. He’ll know, in the future. Assuming it’ll work without Cas wanting it to. 

“What, and this time you had to take public transport?”

“As if I’d let any friend of dear Cas’ travel coach.” The voice is low and purring.

Dean grimaces, that urge to shut the door stronger now, and he watches as a shape at the edge of his vision moves, and Crowley steps away from the front wall of the house. He’s wearing a tailored dress, a red so deep it’s almost black, and his hair is styled elegantly enough for a charity dinner. He looks like it’d be the guests getting eaten. 

“What are you doing here?” Dean demands. He injects as much venom as he can into that. It was Crowley’s mother messing with Cas that sent the angel foaming at the mouth. It was Crowley messing with Cas’ head that pulled the archangel out of mothballs and set this whole tentacles and galaxy-eyes thing going. 

“Now, now, Dean,” Crowley says, a smile tugging at the edges of his lips. “Is that any way to speak to your lover-boy’s saviour?”

“You? Saviour?” It’s only after he’s spoken that Dean realises he hasn’t challenged the rest. Screw it. He has bigger things to worry about. “You helped him get into this mess.”

“Can I help it if Cas isn’t big on preventative measures?” Crowley’s lip curls. Dean fights not to smash it off his face. “He got himself into this mess. I’m just offering to help get him out.”

Dean turns to Hannah, not bothering to try and hide the disbelief he feels.

“You’re seriously buying this? Do you know what this guy’s done?”

“Yes,” Hannah says. “Castiel has told me much. And I know that you have worked with him before. I’ve gathered as many blades as I could and brought them for Castiel, but they aren’t going to do him any good if he dies before he can use them. Crowley claims to have a way to pull the Darkness from Castiel. Heaven has nothing to help with this. I don’t see we have another choice.”

Dean opens his mouth to state that there’s always another choice, but his other choice the last time ended up killing Death. 

“What exactly are you proposing?” he asks. 

Crowley’s smile is expansive. He saunters closer and presses himself into Dean’s space, almost purring. 

“Like calls to like, Dean,” he says. “Get me close to your angel and I’ll call the Darkness out of him, like sucking out poison.”

Crowley’s eyes flash red, and Dean sneers, hiding the way his stomach roils at the thought of what Crowley will end up doing to Cas this time. But he can’t think of anything else right now, Sam hasn’t answered the phone once the whole time Dean’s been ringing him, and he’s got visions of Cas, cracked open and dead, filling his mind. 

“Fine,” he says. “But if I think for one moment-”

“I know, Dean,” Crowley says, “I know.” He winks. “Take me to the angel. Let’s get to sucking, eh?”


	31. Mesh

Jodie refuses to have Crowley in the house.

With a roll of his eyes, the demon announces he’ll wait outside, but there’s a twist to his lips that makes Dean want to check Jodie’s got traps down, that she’s inked up. Crowley has the air of someone playing a private game. Then again, Crowley always does.

Inside, Hannah accepts a cup of coffee, sits with it between her palms. Beyond that, she doesn’t seem to know what it’s for. She never did go native like Cas did. 

Jodie sits across from her and ignores her own coffee, which loses heat at her elbow. 

“You’re like Cas?” Jodie asks. “An angel?”

Hannah smiles, a slow, curving thing of infinite tenderness and absolutely no give. 

“I have long suspected Castiel is not like any of us. It seems that I was right in more ways than I had realised. But yes, I am an angel. And you are a hunter.”

“I’m a cop,” Jodie corrects.

A small nod is the only sign Hannah has heard. Her eyes don’t leave Jodie’s. 

Dean blinks, yawns, rubs his eyes. The adrenaline in his system is keeping him awake, but there’s no fooling the body after too long without sleep. Everything feels gritty and vague. He knows he hasn’t got much longer in him before he’ll have to get his head down. 

“Look, this is great,” he says, blinking again when both heads turn to face him, “but we have the King of Hell outside and a truck full of angel-squid needing draining of poison. You think we could do the feeling each other out later?”

“Yes,” Hannah agrees, inclining her head and uncurling her hands from the mug. “We can feel each other later. We should go.”

“No, that’s not…” 

Dean trails off. There’s something in the light in Hannah’s eyes that reminds him of Cas, and Dean’s long suspected that at least some of Cas’ misunderstandings are deliberate. Maybe this is an angelic attempt to lighten the mood. He offers a sketch of a smile.

“Yeah. Okay. You good, Jodie?”

“If you mean am I happy about this, no,” she says. And sighs. “But you’re right we have things to deal with right now, and Hannah here seems less likely to erupt into tentacles than your Cas, so as long as she promises not to drag a dead whale back to us, I’ll take you all to the barn.”

Dean missed his chance to follow the truck, and he could get the location and just head off, but Jodie seems to feel she should oversee it all. He gets that, that sense of being responsible. Jodie has a teenager living in the area, after all, even if a school trip is keeping her out of the way right now.

He doesn’t even try to argue with Cas being his. 

 

***************************************************8

 

Jodie makes Crowley sit in the back, tells Hannah to keep an eye on him. Crowley complains, of course. He argues he could meet them there. Hannah regards him without comment until he gives in and slides into the car, brushing his skirt straight and making a comment about what Hannah and he can get up to in the back seat that has Jodie hissing with disgust. Dean tells him to shut it or else. Hannah doesn’t say anything, but Crowley yelps and grabs at his ear, and Dean finds himself wondering again exactly what is the deal with Cas’ limbs. 

It’s one thing to get his head around those wings and tentacles appearing if he thinks of them as something new, something called up by whatever weird ritual Cas was trying at Stull, but if they’ve been there all the time, and Dean just couldn’t see them… How often has he stood surrounded by all the parts of Cas he didn’t know were there?

The thought trails him the whole way to the barn, a well-made thing at the edge of a paved yard. Weeds grow in the cracks between some slabs, but not many. Not many at all.

“He’ll be in there,” Jodie says, nodding but making no move to step away from the car. She stands next to it, a guard or a witness but not a participator. Not in this. 

“Right.” Dean sets off, not checking whether the other two are with him. Of course they’re with him. 

The barn doors echo a deep, hollow note around the yard as Dean hauls them open, Hannah and Crowley letting him do the work. For a moment, Dean stands with a hand on either door, framed by the dark interior, an angel on one side and a devil on the other, and is almost creased in two by the urge to laugh. 

Instead, he lets go and steps into the dark.

It takes time for his eyes to adjust to the low light, to stop registering ‘dark’ and to make out the shapes and textures around him. His heart settles into quiet thuds as he calms himself, waits in the coolness for his vision to come back to him, and as the beats inside his body steady and slow, he hears it. A rasp of breath, deep and vibrating, fills up the space. It sounds louder than it should do.

He lets it wrap around him as shapes grow out of the gloom. The truck is gone. The floor of the barn is hard concrete, scattered with stray straw and not much else. Mostly, the barn is filled with Cas.

“Quite the sight,” Crowley says. “Makes me hungry for sushi.”

Dean twitches, keep himself from decking Crowley only by a hair. 

“You said you can fix him,” he says, instead of taking hold of Crowley’s neck, instead of taking a knife to him. “Get to it.”

“Oh, Dean, Dean, Dean,” Crowley chants, walking towards the human body in the middle of the mass of twisted limbs the way someone might stalk towards injured prey. “I said I could suck the poison out. And perhaps I can. But I haven’t any way to fix…this.” He waves a hand at a wing, which is angled awkwardly, a spur of bone catching against the floor and leaving the sail-like night draping from a point higher than Dean’s head. Crowley tilts his own head, his red lips pursing. “I’ve seen things in Hell to make you toes curl, and not in the fun way, but this… Who knew Cas was hiding all this?”

There’s no need to ask. Dean’s seen things in Hell, too. He’s been a thing in Hell.

“Castiel is nothing like your Hellbeasts,” Hannah says. She sounds distant.

When Dean turns his head enough to see her, standing slightly behind and to the side, he sees her lips are slightly parted, her eyes are shifting, tracing over the new lines of Cas’ body. Dean can’t tell if she’s horrified, fascinated, something else. 

“He’s got more eyes,” Crowley says, as though conceding a point. 

Not one of Cas’ eyes are open. Dean moves closer, close enough to touch the wing, and sees the cracked lines. They almost cover it, and even though the wing is night sky those cracks are darker. 

“He’s gotten worse.” Dean doesn’t mean for there to be a catch in his voice. “Hurry up and do whatever the fuck it is you’re planning on.”

Sighing as though all of his fun has been ended, Crowley makes his way to Cas’ head, grimacing as he sinks to his knees. It’s hard to say if it’s actual discomfort or more for the fact his dress picks up the dirt. To Dean’s eyes, the demon is kneeling in the middle of Cas’ shadow heads, one rearing up behind him, something like horns crowning its head. Crowley either doesn’t see them or doesn’t care. 

He rests two fingers of each hand on Cas’ temples, the flesh and blood ones, and his eyes glow red. 

For a while, nothing else happens, and Dean is about to tell Crowley to knock it off when the rumbling starts. It shakes the floor, growing until Dean throws out a hand and grabs hold of Hannah’s arm. She’s solid. Stable.

Crowley’s eyes blaze. His mouth opens on a snarl.

Every one of Cas’ eyes opens, the blue almost blinding, and his body tenses, twists, locks up in an arc of something that looks horribly like pain. Each tentacle whips into movement. The wing near Dean moves, but it’s still stuck against the concrete and it can’t move properly. The others lift, beat at the air, sending gusts around the barn and pushing Dean up against Hannah. Her hand steadies him. The trapped wing tries to move again and Dean is sure he hears when it breaks.

There’s no way the long line of the wing should bend at that angle. 

Cas doesn’t seem to feel it. Not over everything else. His mouth is shut, the lips pressed tightly together, and Crowley still grips his head, fingers curling now to hold on. 

Dean gets his hands to his ears within moments of the high pitched noise of angel screaming starting up, but he feels the sharp stab in his eardrums. 

When Cas’ mouth opens, it isn’t to scream. Dark smoke pours out. No. Not smoke. Oil. Something that gleams like oil and moves like smoke and rushes in a torrent at Crowley, who opens his own mouth wide to accept it. Despite the noise, despite the tension both on Crowley’s face and through Cas’ body, the demon looks almost eager. 

It goes on forever, and then it stops. 

Crowley lets go of Cas’ head and the angel slumps, his skull cracking against the concrete. The wings stop mid-beat, settling to the floor, and the writhing tentacles drop, lie still. The eyes are still open, but dim. 

Dean lets go of Hannah and gets closer to the damaged wing, hand half out. He stops himself before he touches, just in case, but it looks like… Yeah. The cracks are still there, but they aren’t as dark. 

“Did it work?” Dean asks, stepping back until he can see Crowley round the wing.

The demon’s still kneeling, his hands clasped to his stomach, and he looks sick, the edges of euphoria still clinging to his face, like he isn’t sure what to feel.

“What? What is it?” Dean asks.

Crowley still doesn’t answer. Hannah arrives at Dean’s side. She takes his arm, just above his elbow, and tugs him closer to her. She’s only slightly shorter than Dean, and he’s staring almost straight into her eyes when he turns his head. 

“What?” For no reason he’s clear on, he drops his voice to nearly a whisper.

“Something’s wrong. We need to move.”

Dean hasn’t got time to agree before she’s pulling him back to the door, her angel strength something he can’t get away from, even if he wanted to. He isn’t sure he does. 

They make it almost to the door before Crowley’s mouth opens again. The demon screams this time, screams as the darkness pours back out and into Cas, whose eyes blaze again. This time, the blue is darker, shifting quickly to something past navy. Almost black. 

It takes less time. Within a few seconds, Cas is back to lying prone on the floor, his eyes shut, and Crowley is retching onto the floor.

“What the fuck happened?” Dean shouts.

He isn’t sure whether to go to Crowley. God knows, he doesn’t care if the guy’s suffering. Crowley’s killed too many people, done too much damage, but Dean needs to know what’s gone wrong. 

It’s Hannah who moves, walking swiftly around Cas without looking at him and dragging Crowley up to his feet. She has him back by Dean, still coughing and hacking, still looking like bile is about to come spurting from his mouth, before Dean can decide what to do. 

Once Dean and Crowley are both near the door, the light from outside spilling around them like a safety-net, Hannah returns to Cas. She goes as far as that wing, which is still standing up, bent about two thirds of the way up where something in it has clearly snapped. She leans forward, inspecting it. Dean’s mind is a grey blank as he watches her.

When she straightens, she crosses to Castiel’s vessel and peers down at his human face. She only looks for a short while before she shakes her head and kneels by his side. Her movements are so soft, so fluid, that Dean almost doesn’t realise what she’s doing until the flash of silver catches a stray beam of light.

“No!”

He hurls himself across the space, hearing Crowley’s yell as he goes, and throws himself at Hannah, grabbing her arm, wrapping his other arm around her chest. 

She’s strong, so it must be shock that stops her. 

“I have to, Dean,” she says, and her voice is still calm. “Crowley failed. Castiel is too far gone.”

The angel-blade is millimeters from Cas’ chest, poised above his heart. Dean has no idea if that can even kill an archangel, if Cas is one now or if he’s something else, something twisted and wrong. But Hannah didn’t seem to think the extra limbs were evil or diseased the first time she saw them on Cas. It must be the veins of Darkness that have her acting this way. 

“You don’t know that,” he says. 

“You see more of him than before,” Hannah responds, and there is nothing in her tone to indicate Dean is draped half over her back, pulling on her arm to keep her from killing Castiel, “but you still don’t see all of him. I let Crowley try, but as soon as I saw him I could see it was unlikely to work. This Darkness is threaded through all of him, his mind included.”

“He hasn’t tried to hurt anyone.”

“As far as we know. And we don’t know how long that will last.”

This is a fucking bizarre conversation, in a bizarre position, and Dean would laugh if he didn’t feel so sick.

“Don’t do this,” he says.

“Dean, Castiel is not conscious, but when he wakes, if we let him wake, he will not be the Castiel you know.”

At that, Dean does laugh, a harsh bark that’s more pain than anything.

“Sister,” he says, “Cas hasn’t been the angel I know since this whole thing started.” Maybe not for years. It’s so hard to say, so hard to tell who the real Cas is. “But if we have any chance of getting rid of this poison, we gotta try.”

“We did try,” Crowley says, calling from some distance away. Dean can’t look round to see, but it sounds like the demon is hurting, his words scratchy. “That should have worked. If this Darkness is anything like the stuff sloshing around in Hell, it should have worked. This has bonded to him, Dean. It’s the only reason it would have gone down the way it did. You might want to stand around and wait for a twisted archangel to wake up, but I have better things to do, like find the deepest hole in the deepest part of the world and barricade myself into it.”

Hannah moves, throwing Dean off far too easily, and as he falls he sees that Crowley has gone. 

He’s back on his feet and heading at her in moment, but she isn’t making any move to bring that blade down. She’s kneeling right where she was, looking at Cas with such tenderness that Dean’s brought up short.

“I don’t want to do this,” she says, without looking. “He showed me what it is to truly serve Heaven. For that, I will always remember him with gratitude. And with love.”

She brings the blade back, ready to strike, and Dean would leap to stop her, he would, but before he can so much as twitch he sees Cas’ eyes open. Just his human ones. Before Dean can move, or Hannah can move, Cas moves.

He surges up, a tentacle wrapping around Hannah and lifting her from the ground, another ripping the blade from her. A wing almost hits Dean, and he flings himself to the ground just in time. 

When the movement stops, Hannah is hanging limp from Cas’ grip and Cas holds the blade in his hands, looking at it speculatively. He glances up at Dean and smiles, and Dean sees the fine webbing of dark lines on Cas’ face. It’s like his friend is looking at him from behind a chain-mesh, and that smile is not something he has ever seen on Cas’ face before.


	32. Deeps between

Dean can’t move. 

Every muscle seems to have frozen entirely, just seized up and locked and become immobile. For a long, stretched out moment, he isn’t sure if it’s shock or some power Cas is using. He’s caught in a part crouch, ready to spring at Hannah, to save Cas, but Cas doesn’t need him. Cas has saved himself.

Dean isn’t sure yet exactly what he’s dealing with.

“Cas?” he asks, speaking more effort than hauling a body usually is. “Cas, you okay?” He still hasn’t managed to move. Those few words have been a struggle.

Cas has that smile on his face, that curl of his lips that’s twisting Dean’s stomach. The light in his eyes is partly just the blue Dean always sees, and partly the glow of grace, but it’s reflecting oddly, like Dean’s staring into another space, one with angles and refractions and all sorts of things his mind can’t quite process.

Without answering Dean, Cas turns to Hannah, lowering her until she’s level with him, her feet scraping the floor. 

“You were tasked with bringing me my blades,” Cas says, “Not with bringing me a demon. Not with wielding a blade against me. Explain.”

“She’s out cold,” Dean says, because he has the feeling Cas can’t tell, like trifling details, such as eyes being open and heads being held up, aren’t registering with him. “She can’t answer.”

“She is of the Host,” Cas says, as though that counters Dean’s words. His tentacle moves, shaking Hannah, and her head swings. “She should not have failed in her duty.”

That’s far too close to a pronouncement, a judgment, and Dean’s going to get whiplash from working out who he’s saving.

“Wait,” he says, even though Cas has made no sign of doing anything other than staring at Hannah’s unmoving form and shifting her about. “She got them. She’s brought them. We just…we needed to make sure you were ready for them. Okay? No need to do anything drastic.”

Cas turns to look at Dean, and the eyes are just as bad as they were a moment ago. The light in them hasn’t faded at all. The rest of Cas’ eyes are still closed, and the veins run over his whole body, now, angelic and human. 

“Where are they? Take me to them.”

“They…” But Hannah didn’t actually say where the blades were. Dean remembers her saying she had them, but she didn’t have a bag with her or anything. “Hannah needs to show you.”

Need, if nothing else, should stop Cas from hurting Hannah now. 

The tentacle wrapped around the other angel loosens, and Hannah slithers out of its grasp. Snapping out of whatever was holding him still, Dean makes it to her just before she hits the ground, saving her head from a blow to the concrete. She’s an angel, can probably fix herself up, but that doesn’t make it okay.

He hefts her into his arms and turns to face the doors. The first step is getting Hannah back to the car, then he can work on the rest. Cas is awake, at least. He’s talking. Just as soon as this crackling sense of dread leaves Dean, he’ll ask Cas how he is again, get an answer this time. They can go from there.

“Follow me,” he says. 

The area outside the barn is fields. Fields and fields and then some more fields. Jodie has assured him that there’s no-one around for miles, so it shouldn’t matter if Cas steps outside.

Dean only makes it a few steps before he hears Cas hiss. The slithering noise of the limbs moving drags Dean’s head around to see Cas contracting, pulling his tentacles and wings in close to the vessel. Even the shadow heads, those things Dean really wishes he couldn’t see, are tucked down lower than normal. 

Everything except the broken wing.

That’s fallen to an even worse angle, the break so obvious Dean wonders if the bone inside it is split right in two and the leading edge almost on the floor, but hanging forwards where the rest of the wing is the other way. The look on Cas’ face is tight, the light in his eyes rippling.

“I am injured,” Cas says. He sounds irritated. Confused. Like he can’t work out how this could have happened. 

“Yeah,” Dean says, knowing his voice sounds strained from carrying Hannah, who has to nearing six foot in this vessel, her body harder lines than it used to be. “Won’t the new blades fix you up?”

Cas is staring at the wing. He narrows his eyes, his expression tightening, and extends one tentacle to the point where the wing is most obviously damaged. As it touches the wing, the eyes on that tentacle open. Every one of them is a swirling mix of the usual bright blue and the darker, almost black hue Dean saw earlier. The two don’t look like they belong together. 

The atmosphere draws tight, a feeling of everything around Dean being stretched and shaped, and the wing rights itself, the bone, or what looks like it must be bone, realigning, settling. Healing. 

When Cas pulls the tentacle away, it’s with an air of satisfaction. He nods at Dean, as though granting permission to move, and walks out, past Dean with his armful of Hannah. 

Dean can’t help it. He cringes as Cas goes past, wanting to lean away from the mass that his brain just can’t quite accept is a part of his best friend. He feel awful for it. It’s still Cas. If he loves…cares for Cas, it should be easier to take on board that all of this is Cas. But he’s not exactly set up to see something that looks like it should be swimming through the deeps of the ocean as a friend, let alone family. 

He keeps his eyes open by sheer force of will. He makes himself look, and take in the roiling limbs and inhuman skin studded with eyes. If he makes himself keep looking, makes himself get used to it, perhaps he’ll stop feeling like horror is crawling under his skin when he looks at Cas. 

Which is why, when Cas’ just healed wing goes by, Dean sees the spreading splotch of darkness, right where the bone was broken. Whatever Cas has done to heal himself, it isn’t Grace that’s done the job. 

Dean’s last impression of Cas before the angel makes it into the sunlight is of darkness, spreading and tainting and eating up the light. Cas was star-fire. Now, Dean’s starting to think they guy’s the deeps between the stars, and nothing can live there.


	33. Tea

Jodie makes it to Dean’s side before his vision has readjusted to the light. 

“Did Crowley do it?” she asks. “Is Cas better?”

Her tone, and the way her eyes flick over to the angel and back, make it clear she has her doubts that ‘better’ is the right word. Dean wishes he could argue, that he could say Cas is fine, but out in the light those cracked veins of darkness are even more obvious. Cas is riddled with them. His human skin looks worst, because Dean’s used to seeing human skin, and it isn’t meant to have roots of darkness tattooed over every inch. 

Maybe if he thinks of them as tattoos, he’ll be able to get close to Cas without being sick.

The rest of Cas is just as thickly covered, and it’s horrible, it is, but those parts of the guy are so weird anyway that Dean can tell himself it’s just part of the way they are. It doesn’t make them much more nauseating. 

Apart from the eyes. Seeing so many of them shut, the ones which are open mingled with a colour that seems to be sucking at the light, is fighting for top spot in the most disturbing part of this. 

“He’s fine,” Dean says to Jodie. “We need to find where Hannah stashed those blades.”

“What happened to her?” Jodie asks. “And where’s Crowley?” She walks next to Dean, her posture indicating she’s ready to step in if Dean stumbles under Hannah’s weight. “Let me guess. He skedaddled out of there the moment he had what he wanted.”

“Don’t think he got what he wanted.”

A niggling thought works through Dean’s mind that maybe this is what Crowley wants. Maybe that whole poison thing was just for show. Crowley is always on Crowley’s side, and Dean needs to remember that. 

Jodie gets the back door open and helps Dean to slide Hannah onto the bench seat, arranging her legs and arms so she looks at least someway to comfortable. 

“I’ll wait in the car,” Jodie says, shooting a look over Dean’s shoulder before she slips around the Impala and vanishes into the vehicle. 

Dean knew Cas was behind him from the way the sun was being blocked, but when he turns and finds most of the sky blocked out it’s enough to make him jump.

“Jesus, Cas,” he snaps. “Do you mind?”

“Where are the blades?” Cas’ voice echoes, the odd harmonics making Dean feel a bit drunk. The eyes aren’t helping. “I need my blades. The Darkness is spreading.”

“No kidding,” Dean replies. From the lack of any reaction from Cas, he can see that hasn’t been understood. “Cas, look, you’re covered in…in those lines, Man. Crowley couldn’t get the stuff out of you. You were knocked out cold. How are you even still moving?” When everyone else touched by the things is dead. “What do we do to cure you?”

“Cure?” Cas asks. His wings shift, just slightly, and his heads move, like they need to find a better angle from which to see Dean, so they can understand what he means. 

Dean wonders how far the darkness has worked through them. What with not being able to see them, not really, not as more than insubstantial shapes, it’s impossible to tell. He wonder if the veins have eaten right through Cas’ brain. Does that even matter? It’s really Jimmy’s brain, after all, and it’s not like the guy’s using it. 

“Yeah,” Dean insists. He has to keep moving forward, here. The moment he lets himself stop, he’ll have to face how impossible all of this is. “The Darkness…it’s infected you. How can you fight something that’s infected you?”

Cas steps forward, even though he’s already closer than most people would stand, and Dean can smell him. He smells like a deep cave and ocean spray and something metallic. It shouldn’t be as disturbing as it is. There’s an edge to it that makes Dean hunch his shoulders and try to pull back, but the car is right at his back. He hasn’t got anywhere to go.

“You fought vampires when you were one,” Cas says, quietly, almost as though it’s a secret and there’s anyone to hear. 

“I…” Dean can’t remember telling Cas about that. He forgets, sometimes, that Cas is friends with Sam, that he spent time with Charlie, towards the end. “So what, you’re saying you go chop of the Darkness’ head and we boil you up a mug of tea with its blood?”

Cas smiles again, the lights in his eyes shifting. Dean shivers. 

“I’m saying I am…the mug of tea,” he says. “I need my blades to regrow my true form. I need to be whole. I must be large enough to choke it.”


	34. Information

It takes some effort to get Cas to agree to stay in the barn. 

He agrees, but Dean has the feeling the angel won’t be there when Dean gets back, not unless Dean hurries. That brings up its own issue, of course. 

“You have no idea where she left them?” Jodie asks, as the Impala pulls away from the yard, leaving the barn door open and no hint of what lurks inside. “Geez, like that’s going to make it a quick trip.”

“I know, Jodie. All right? I know.” Dean clenches his hands around the steering wheel, just to have something solid to hold on to. “Didn’t say it would be easy. Not unless Hannah wakes up.”

He’s spending far too much of his time watching over sleeping angels lately. At least Hannah looks…peaceful. Kind of. No obvious injuries, anyway. He checked the skin he could see without getting too personal, and there were no signs of any black lines just yet. He can’t shake the idea that the Darkness is some kind of sickness, that Hannah might have picked it up from Cas. Cas, who could be splitting apart at the seams right now, alone in that barn.

“Try calling Sam,” he says, flexing his hands to relieve some of the pain in them. Holding on too tight hurts.

“You think he’ll know where the blades are?”

Dean pulls some sort of face that has Jodie pulling out her phone, and he figures it’s not lying. Not really. He just needs to hear that Sam’s okay. He can’t have both of his people on his worry list at once. Just a few words from Sam to say he’s fine, that he was sleeping and his phone was out of charge, anything to mean Dean hasn’t got to make a choice between staying here and helping Cas and rushing back to save Sam. 

He tells himself he’s over putting Sam above anything, just the way Sam should be over doing that for Dean. The nagging sense of sick guilt hasn’t really left his gut since that scythe hit home, and he realised he’d screwed up worse than any amount of breaking of seals. That Sam had. 

He glances over at Jodie, seeing her frowning out of the front window, her phone clamped to her ear. 

“He answering?”

“Does it sound like I’m having a conversation?” Jodie asks. 

Dean opens his mouth. Closes it. There’s not a lot to say to that. Worry clenches that bit harder at his heart, but it’s already in such a vice-like grip. A little more is barely anything. 

“I’ll keep trying,” Jodie says, after a pause. 

The don’t speak again until they’ve reached Jodie’s house, and then it’s only to work out what to do with Hannah. Dean tries to wake her, but nothing doing. He hefts her out of the car and into the house, arranging her on the bed in Jodie’s spare room, a pillow with a pattern of yellow roses under her head. It’s not the sort of pillow he expected Jodie to have, but a lot of unexpected things have been happening lately. 

Hannah looks peaceful. 

He checks again for dark lines, lifting her right hand and pushing back her sleeve to trace the skin along the wrist and forearm. Nothing. He peers at her face, her throat, but messing about with her clothing to check any further seems wrong. Intrusive. He doesn’t really know Hannah. Besides, it’s not like he knows how to help her if she has been infected. He certainly hasn’t managed to help Cas.

“Dean?” 

Jodie calls from downstairs, and he casts one last look at the angel on the bed before he leaves. Until Hannah wakes, they won’t know where the blades are. Not unless he works out who else he can ask. His tread is heavy as he makes his way down to the kitchen, the weight of everything bearing down on him and coiling, sluggish and thick, in his veins. 

In the kitchen, Jodie is leaning against the kitchen counter, one foot crossed over the other and her arms folded round herself. She looks over at him and he sees something like his own worry etched on her features. 

“I heard from Sam,” she says, before Dean can speak. 

“What did he say?” There’s something hanging in the air that Dean really doesn’t like. It’s in the way Jodie looks at him, in the fact Dean hasn’t been able to reach Sam. “What’s wrong?”

Jodie shakes her head.

“He’s on his way here. Says we have to keep an eye on your Castiel.”

“An eye?” Dean scowls. “An eye in what way? He suddenly worried about Cas?”

Because Sam hasn’t seemed overly worried about Cas in a long while, now Dean thinks about it. That hard, cold edge to his brother that’s sharpened since Death bit the big one was already extended to anyone who wasn’t Dean, as far as he’s been able to work out. Charlie’s death didn’t shake his brother as much as it should have. Dean wonders if Cas dying would have been taken the same way. A few tears, an attempt at some words, and then right back to the mission. He’s pretty sure he knows the answer, and he hates it.

He hates more that it’s a mindset he’s been guilty of himself. Hates that he’s the one who nearly did end Cas.

“I don’t know,” Jodie says. She sounds troubled. “He says he’s got information you need to hear. Says he wants to tell you himself. He should be here in a few hours.”

Sam doesn’t answer when Dean tries to call. He might be driving, but that doesn’t explain why Sam hasn’t called Dean, or why he’s not picked up any of the times Dean has called. 

Pacing doesn’t do anything to help, and Jodie won’t let him drink. She doesn’t say much, but the look in her eyes when he asks if she has any beer is enough to stop him. He isn’t sure he’d taste it, anyway. 

He ends up sitting in a chair next to the spare bed, praying at Hannah to wake up. She doesn’t. 

He prays to Cas, tells him to hold on in there and just wait, and leaves him a phone message saying the same. He’s had the feeling, ever since taking the Mark, that his prayers to Cas haven’t been getting through. He’s got the feeling he might have burnt out that part of himself that gets to pray to angels. 

Cas doesn’t answer. Not the prayer. Not the message.

Dean’s still sitting there when the sound of a car pulling up outside breaks the silence that’s fallen round him. He’s halfway down the stairs when Jodie pulls the door open and Sam strides in, his eyes finding Dean right away. He looks focused.

Sam accepts Jodie’s hug, wrapping one arm around her for a split second, but he holds Dean’s gaze. As soon as Jodie steps back, he drops his bag on the floor inside the door and nods at his brother.

“We need to talk,” he says. “You need to listen.”

“I need to listen?” Dean’s come to a halt on the stairs, a reluctance to descend the last few feet to meet his brother rooting him to the spot. “You’re the one who hasn’t been answering his phone.”

“Because you wouldn’t have listened to me over the phone. Not on this. And I didn’t want to ring at all until I knew if I’d have something useful to share.”

“And you have?” Dean barely waits for Sam’s nod. “Well, that’s great, Sam. What did you do? Find some wise old wizard to ask?” 

Sam doesn’t need to look so pissed at that. They’ve scoured the bunker, called anyone they still have in their contacts list. Hell, they asked Crowley. Even Cas didn’t know anything. His mind skitters away from that one. 

“I found someone with information. Just come down here and listen to me, all right?”

Despite himself, Dean drags himself down to Sam’s level and follows him into the kitchen, where his brother drops his shoulder bag on the table and digs out his laptop and a folder. He settles in, papers spread around him and the laptop opening to some page of symbols Dean doesn’t know, and looks up at where Dean’s still hovering some way from a chair.

“Sit down,” Sam says. It sounds far too much like John Winchester for comfort. “You need to see this. You aren’t going to believe me if you don’t.”

Dean sits, but now the worry has taken to vibrating in his chest, in his bones, through his blood.

“Just tell me what the fuck you’re dancing around, Sam,” he says. “Why’d you have to go radio silent and then drive all the way here to show me some photos? Spill.”

His brother stares at him, looking away just long enough to flick a glance at Jodie. Dean can’t tell if he’s checking she’s there or thinking of asking her to leave. Telling her, with the face Sam has on him. Jodie takes matters into her own hands and joins them at the table, folding her hands on the tabletop and staring right back at Sam with a slightly raised eyebrow. It’s clear she isn’t going anywhere. Not in her own house. 

When Sam looks back at Dean, he has the look about him of someone who’s going to see this through no matter what. 

“I think I’ve found a way to stop this,” he says, and it really isn’t the right tone for announcing a winning plan. “This Darkness, it’s not destructive. No. Here me out.” He holds a hand up as Dean opens his mouth to argue. “I know what it’s done, but it’s not actually trying to destroy. It’s…potential. That’s all. It’s what God came from, what everything came from, and the problem isn’t that it wants to break anything up. The problem is it’s a…a primal force.” 

Sam pauses, the hand he held up now curling back towards himself, as though he’s trying to sketch out this force for Dean in the air between them. The pinch between his brows says he knows he isn’t managing it.

“So it’s got potential,” Dean says. “So what? So far, all it’s managed is splitting people into corpses. And it’s infected Cas.”

Sam’s hand drops, and he takes a breath that Dean really doesn’t like.

“Wait. Is this about Cas?” Dean asks. “You said you knew about the Darkness. How to stop it. Come on, Sammy. Stop holding out on me.”

“Yeah. Right. So, the Darkness is driven to…to produce, I guess. Or create. Or maybe to transform. I’m not really clear on that part. But angels? Especially archangels? They were created to destroy. Dean, destruction’s what they are. It’s why God created them, to destroy anything that got in the way of his creation.”

“No.” Dean sits back, pushing at the table until his arms are straight and full of tension. “No. That’s bull-crap. Angels…yeah, they’re dicks. Most of them. But they do create. They heal. Hell, I’ve read enough about them lately to know they do all kinds of shit.”

“They do.” Sam nods. “But that’s not what they were created for. That’s just what God, I don’t know, re-purposed them to do. Cas? I think I’ve found him. Archangel him. And there are loads of things he’s supposed to be angel of. Tears and solitude and all kinds of stuff, but I’ve seen some really old accounts since you flew off to check out the bodies here, and one version of his name has been used in spells to create destruction. Hell, it looks like, way back, he was less God’s shield and more one of his nukes. And he’s not our Cas. Not right now. No, Dean. You have to listen.”

Dean stops, halfway out of the chair, his hands now fists, and glares at his brother.

“Listen to what, Sam? You telling me Cas can fuck shit up? Because we already know that. Telling me he can destroy? That ain’t news. He’s laid waste to half of heaven. We know that. So what’s the point of all this? Because it sounds like you have it in for Cas more than you do the Darkness that’s eating people up.” And whales, and angels, and fuck knows what else. 

Sam’s voice has a sharp, unrelenting edge to it. 

“My information tells me that the Darkness can be controlled. Contained.”

“Someone to take a Mark? You’re telling me you want to create another Mark?”

“No!” Sam sounds disgusted. “Look, the Mark wasn’t what was meant to happen. All right? It wasn’t the way Death told you. Lucifer didn’t take the Mark to stop the Darkness. He already had the Darkness in him. It got to him. The Mark was the way to stop it spreading through him all the way. The plan was different. And, Dean, this is what bothers me. Lucifer only got hit up with a bit of the Darkness. From what I’m told, Cas has a lot more in him.”

“What?” Cold nausea brought Dean back into his seat. He knew he must be pale. He felt pale. “You’re telling me Cas is going to turn into Lucifer?”

“I’m telling you he’s going to be worse. I’m telling you God left it too long, that he loved Lucifer too much, and it twisted the angel who was the brightest and the most loyal until he turned on his father and had to be cast out. We have to deal with the Darkness. Sure. But first we have to deal with Cas.” Sam leans towards Dean, as though he can push his insistence through Dean’s skin if he gets close enough. “I’m telling you we have to stop him before he becomes worse than the devil. And the only way I can find to do that is to kill him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I just realised I've been spelling Jody wrong. It just looks right to me with an 'ie' ending. I'll catch it in the edit, which will happen once I actually finish the story, so anyone who wants to read a version which looks vaguely like it's been read through and polished, you will just have to wait. :)


	35. Words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might be more an extension of the last chapter, but so it goes. Been very, very busy and exhausted with work, so trying to get back to writing some of my fics. Bear with me, people. And kudos and comments do help to energise. They are like little energy berries. 
> 
> It occurs to me, typing that, that I may need more sleep...

“I’m not letting Cas die.”

Dean’s voice is flat. Definite. It’s cold granite that won’t be altered or moved. 

“Dean,” Sam says, “I know how you feel about Cas. I love him, too. He’s family. But this is-”

“It’s what, Sammy? The fate of the world?” Dean feels his lips curl up into a smile drained of all humour, all warmth. “Letting the Darkness loose on the world, to save someone you love?”

Sam doesn’t flinch. His jaw tenses. He shifts on his seat. But he doesn’t flinch.

“That’s not the same,” he says.

“Why not? Because it was me?” Dean keeps the same tone, the one that would sound amused to someone who had never met him and who had no self-preservation skills at all. Sam doesn’t fall into either of those categories, and he watches Dean with stone eyes. “That’s bullshit. I told you to let me go. I told you… And now Cas is paying. Again. And we have to deal with him. Again. Like he’s…he’s some chore we have to get done. That sound like the way you treat family?”

“It sounds like the way you treat a threat,” Sam says. “Look, Dean, I don’t like it, either. I don’t. But you have to face facts. When Cas goes off the reservation, he goes way, way off. You remember what he did when he was playing God. What do you think he’ll be like when he’s playing the Devil?”

“We got him back that time,” Dean says. He pushes back the memories of Cas’ blood-marked face, of the oily taint of Leviathan. “And he learned from that. You know how hard he’s tried to make up for it, Sam. You’re really going to hold it against him now?

Sam shakes his head, as though he just can’t understand why Dean isn’t getting it, why he’s being so stubborn and ignorant. Like Sam pities his brother for his obstinacy. 

“It’s got nothing to do with holding anything against him,” Sam says. “This isn’t bad blood. This is knowledge. I wish to God I didn’t know what Cas is like when he gets fixed on something. Then I could hope we didn’t have to do this. But Dean, I do know him, and so do you. He’ll do anything once he decides it’s what needs to be done.”

“He’s not the only one.”

Sam’s mouth snaps shut. He sits back in his chair and crosses his arms, a thoughtful look on his face. There is hurt, there, too, lurking in his eyes. Dean ignores it.

“The point is that Lucifer convinced himself mankind had to go,” Sam goes on after only a brief pause,”that we were a blight on the world. We lost a lot of good people fighting him, and we had Cas on our side. What will Cas decide needs to go if we don’t stop him?”

“You seem awfully sure he’s going to decide something has to go,” Dean says. “He’s not hurt anybody so far.” Hannah is fine. She’s just…sleeping. It doesn’t count. “So he used to be an angel of destruction. So what? I used to be a demon. You were the Boy King.” Sam does flinch, then. A tiny movement that Dean ignores. “He’s saved us both more times than I can count. He’s helped us save the world. You want me to just jump on board with this idea that Cas’ll turn into Lucifer Mark Two? Why? You have some notes and some mysterious source of information. No go, Sam. It’s not enough.”

For the first time since Sam started spouting this nonsense about Cas, Jody speaks up. 

“Maybe if you told us who your source is, it’ll make things clearer.” She’s using a calm, sensible tone, the sort of thing Dean can imagine her using on witnesses when they’re panicking and withholding information. “Dean here might find it easier to hear you if he knows where you got this.”

Dean shoots her a look, but she’s got her eyes on Sam. She can’t really be siding with Sam. She can’t. Only…she hasn’t seemed all that on board about Cas over the last few hours, like she thinks they might be making a mistake keeping Cas in the ‘friend’ column and not in the one marked ‘thing to hunt’. He supposes, when you’ve had to move your own kid into that column, you develop a different mindset. 

Even Dean has shifted Cas over to that column before. But that was years ago, back before Purgatory, before he realised quite what Cas means to him, even with all the talk of being like family. 

Still, Jody had to see her own kid…

She’s waiting for Sam’s reply, her expression saying she isn’t backing off, however mild the request might have sounded. 

“Fine.” Sam’s shoulders heave up into a shrug as he relents, as though he’s granting a favour. “But you have to stay on track, here. No blasting off on a tangent because you don’t like what you hear.” 

That last bit is definitely aimed at Dean.

“What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means, Dean,” Sam says,”You don’t get to decide what’s right and wrong, not with this.”

“Well, that’s just all kinds of encouraging, Sam.” He can’t help the bite in his voice. Sam is doing nothing to soothe Dean’s nerves. “Why don’t you enlighten me. Who’s this source?”

“Someone who knows Cas way better than we do.”

“Impossible,” Dean snaps.

“No. Dean. Not when he’s like he is now. We know Cas as a seraph, yeah, but not as an archangel. Not with all his old memories. And certainly not what happens to an archangel when it’s been infected by the Darkness. All that destruction mixed up with the potential? It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

Dean scowls. He shares a quick glance with Jody, but he can’t make out what she’s thinking. 

“No-one knows Cas as an archangel. Hannah didn’t know he was an archangel. When Naomi or whoever wiped out Cas’ memories, they must have taken everyone’s.”

“Maybe,” Sam says. “Maybe not. But, Dean, it turns out all the archangels are connected. When Cas got his memories back, so did all the others.”

“And you’ve been talking to one of the others?” Cas had mentioned there being seven. “Which one? How? What exactly has it been saying? Wait. They’re connected?”

“I know. It’s hard to take in,” Sam says, “but it’s true. I’m still working it out, but I do know Cas, Cassiel, he was tasked with watching over Lucifer after they defeated the Darkness the first time. God put the Mark on as a stop-gap, but he needed time to work out something more permanent, and he told Cassiel to stand guard over Lucifer in the meantime. You get what that means, right?”

“That Cas’ name sounds better with a ‘t’ in it?” Dean asks, but the nerves are thrumming under his skin. Sam’s been talking to an archangel, to an archangel who’s filled Sam’s head with information about Cas that Dean doesn’t have, and nothing about this feels right.

Sam ignores him, leaning forward again, one hand open on the table as though his words are meant as an offering. His eyes are still hard, still unrelenting. 

“It means that God chose Cassiel over all of his archangels when he needed the Morningstar kept under control. You’ve got to see what that says, Dean. You need someone dangerous watching, you give the job to someone who can handle it.”

“You’re trying to say that Cas is dangerous. I get it.”

“I’m saying that Cassiel, the archangel, is more powerful, more deadly than Gabriel or Raphael, or Michael. Otherwise, why not give the job to them?”

Dean pushes up from his chair, not wanting to see Sam’s outstretched hand. It looks too much like a plea that Dean grip it, that he show Sam he’s with him on this one. And he isn’t. He can’t be.

“Maybe they had something else to do. Look, what difference does it make? If Cas is the most dangerous archangel after Lucifer, so what? Even if that’s true, that doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t prove he’s going to turn on us. None of this means anything, Sam, except you should pick up your damn phone and call me when an archangel comes calling. We should have talked to it together. Not let it tell tales on Cas when I wasn’t there.”

“Tell tales…? No. I am not getting side-tracked. One of Cas’ own siblings told me that it took years for Lucifer to show any signs of being infected. You tell me, is Cas showing any sign yet?”

So he was ‘Cas’ again, now. Sam was too good at shaping the way people heard him for Dean to ignore that, but the rest of Sam’s sentence threw him.

“He…there might be some signs. You already said he’s had a bigger dose. It’s not like it’s a huge shock if it’s showing up a little quicker.” Dean tries to keep the worry out of his voice, but there’s a flicker in Sam’s eyes that says it’s been noted. “I already told you, he hasn’t done anything that means he’s been turned evil. We should be focusing on the actual threat. If this archangel of yours is so chatty, it must have told you how to get rid of the Darkness.”

“That’s just it,” Sam says. “Once it’s bonded to something living, you have to take out that creature or put a lock on it, like the Mark. And it’s bonded to Cas.”

“You said we didn’t have to use a Mark,” Dean says. He isn’t shouting, but it’s only because he’s keeping tight control over himself.

“Not if Cassiel is dead.”

Jody breaks in, and Dean lets her, taking the time to turn his back on the table and try to just breathe.

“You’re saying your angel friend has caught this Darkness,” she says, like it’s some bug Cas has got, “and that it’s going to twist him into something worse than the Devil, and your only choices are to put a lock on him or to kill him. You’re saying you need to do one or the other before you can get rid of this thing that’s splitting people open at the seams?” Sam must have nodded, because Jody sounds definite when she goes on. “Well, Dean, I’m sorry, but if Sam’s right about this, then I don’t see what choice you have.”

“I’m right,” Sam says. 

Dean can’t hear any warmth in that. Not a bit. No matter what Sam says about loving Cas, it doesn’t sound like it just now. 

“And I don’t buy it,” Dean says. “Even if everything else you’re saying is true, that doesn’t mean death’s the only way to get the Darkness out of Cas. There must be another way. I mean, I carried the Mark, and I don’t have any Darkness covering my skin in lines.”

“And Cas does?”

Fuck. Sam didn’t know that. It’s just going to fuel this stupid idea he has that Cas is too far gone to help. 

“It’s not important,” Dean says, and he pinches the bridge of his nose between his right thumb and forefinger, pressing and hoping it eases up the headache that’s digging its claws into his brain. “What’s important is we get the blades from Hannah and help Cas power up enough to fight this evil off.”

He hears Sam stand up, but he doesn’t turn to look at him. Sam’s being stubborn, is ignoring Dean’s opinion. Well, two can play at that game. 

“I’m going to check on Hannah,” Dean says, and makes for the spare room, the pain in his skull pounding with each step. 

He doesn’t hear Sam following him. Instead, he catches the muffled voices of Jody and Sam as Dean goes upstairs, and he sends a quick prayer to Cas, telling him to watch himself. Telling him to fight whatever the Darkness is doing. 

When he reaches the bedroom, he stops in the doorway, staring. Hannah is sitting upright on the bed, her hands clasped together. She looks concerned.

“How long have you been awake?” Dean asks. “You feeling okay?” He remembers a time in a house, a time when Cas flew in and took on a bunch of demons after being missing for months, and his comment about what Sam and Dean said in the other room. “You…er…you hear any of that?”

“Yes,” Hannah says. “Most of it. And you need to ask your brother again, which archangel he’s been talking to.”


	36. Cleanse

“Why does it matter?” Sam asks. “You need to worry more about what I’ve told you and less about who’s been telling me.”

“Hannah seems to think it matters, Sam,” Dean insists, leaning over the table and doing his damnedest not to shout. He sees Jody away by the sink, leaning back with her arms crossed over her chest. She looks wary. He hates that. “And if it really doesn’t matter, then what’s the big deal with saying?”

He hears Hannah move behind him, but he doesn’t look around to see what she’s doing. She isn’t exactly steady on her feet, still, but another cursory check showed no signs of the marks Cas carries, so he’s let her follow him downstairs. In any case, she’s keeping quiet on this and Dean’s fine with that. This is just another round of the same, tired dance he’s been at with Sam for years. There’s a weight in his limbs, all through his flesh, with every time they’ve done this another anchor hooked into him, dragging at him. He just wants it over.

“Just tell me, Sam,” he says. “Come one. You hate it when I keep things from you.”

“Like summoning Death? You mean that kind of thing?”

They stand, only not glaring at each other because the frustration, the exhaustion in the room drains the anger needed for that out of the air. Leastways, that’s how it feels to Dean. That dragging down of everything he is pulls his pride, too, his stubbornness. They’ve already started another round of the end times. The stone in him is worn down.

“Yeah, Sam. That sort of thing.”

Sam blinks, sits back. Over at the sink, Jody lifts an eyebrow. Dean doesn’t move. He’s tried everything else. Maybe giving in is worth a shot. On this, at least. He isn’t giving in on Cas, and he isn’t backing down on wanting to know the name of the archangel Sam’s been talking to, but he can cave on the need to be right all the time, to justify and defend.

It’s just possible that Sam’s eyes are softer when he speaks again, but it’s comparing granite to sandstone, even so.

“All right. Yeah. I hate it.” He takes a breath, blinks again. “Okay. So, and you have to keep in mind that we are up against the Darkness before all life, here, but I’ve been hearing from Michael.”

Dean has to give Sam credit. He sends that name out into the world without hesitation or any sign of nerves. It’s said in the same measured, sure tone as everything else Sam’s been saying since he turned up at Jody’s house. Michael. Like it’s…nothing.

“Michael?” Dean says, pulling back until he’s standing with his hands in his pockets. It masks the fact he’s balled his fingers up into fists. “Archangel Michael. Michael, stuck-in-the-cage Michael?” 

Sam just looks back at him, unmoving and unmoved.

“You didn’t feel like going the whole hog and calling up Lucifer for a chat?”

“He called me,” Sam says, an undercurrent in there that says Dean ought to watch it. Even now, all these years and other tragedies later, the Devil is a sore spot. “Says he knows better than anyone what the Darkness does to a loved one, no matter how bright and pure they are. Were. That mojo Cas was trying, out at Stull? It didn’t crack the Cage open, but it did do enough to give Michael a line.”

“Well, great.” Dean says. Fear is building up under his sternum, pushing bitterness ahead of it. “That’ll come in real handy when we want some advice on how to twist a bunch of people into ending the world. Oh, wait. We don’t need help with that one.”

“Dean,” Sam says. “Michael…he’s different. I told you, when Cas got his memories back, when he tried to reach out at Stull, it rebooted all of them. Michael remembers now. He remembers the battle they had the first time, and he regrets losing hope about his Dad going AWOL.”

“He regrets…? No. No, he doesn’t get to switch around like that. He is not on our side. He never was. I don’t care what he suddenly has flooding back into his brain. He is just as much the enemy as Lucifer ever was.”

“Come on,” Sam says, “it’s not like we haven’t cozied up with other enemies. What was it Crowley took to calling the two of you? Besties? Yeah, I heard him. And let’s not forget that he’s killed a lot of people, some just for knowing us. He killed Sarah.”

“He almost killed me,” Jody says, her voice a lot milder than a comment like that could have been. 

That brings Dean up short. He has a thousand arguments against Sam’s point, but he can hear every one of them being knocked down, can hear before he even says them how hollow they are. Sam’s right. They have worked with Crowley. Hell, Dean had the Mark because he worked with Crowley, and he can say he didn’t trust the guy, but he still ended up in some messed up relationship with the King of Hell, even after Sam and Cas pulled him back from demon-hood. 

Hannah speaks up from behind Dean, her tone measured.

“Michael commanded Heaven’s forces. He has experience none of the rest of us have, and if he really has changed his mind about the Apocalypse… He wouldn’t be the first angel you’ve worked with after a difficult phase.”

Dean has no idea if she means Cas or herself or any of the others through their years since angels first became an actual thing in their day-to-day lives. From the tight look on Sam’s face, he’s probably thinking of Cas working with Gadreel. There’s an air of guilt there that tends to crop up whenever Sam’s thinking about Kevin, which isn’t even the death he should feel guilty about.

“Fine,” Dean says, before his mind can wrap itself up into any more knots. “So he might have come round. He also might not. You say he’s still stuck in the Cage?”

“Yes,” Sam says. “It’s still locked up tight. They can’t get out.”

“Good. But we don’t know what he’s been twisted into, being trapped with just Lucifer all those years.” He pauses as another through smacks into his mind. “Unless… They were the only two in there, right?”

Sam nods. 

“Adam was never there, Dean. Michael was just wearing his body. I asked.”

That’s something, at least. 

“And he sounds completely with it,” Sam goes on. “He really isn’t the one we should be worrying about being twisted.” Sam sighs and pushes himself upright. It’s one of those moments when Dean realises just how tall his brother is. “Look, how about we just go check on Cas. If I’m wrong, then he’ll be fine, and we won’t have to worry.”

That…makes a sort of sense. Dean glances down at Sam’s materials again. 

“And you haven’t got any way of cleaning the Darkness out of him in that lot?”

He sees the way Sam twitches.

“What? You’ve got something?”

“I already told you, once the Darkness finds an anchor, it can only be stopped if the anchor is destroyed or we bottle it up in one place and slap a new Mark on it.”

“But you do have something, don’t you? I know you, Sam. Spill.”

Sam holds Dean’s gaze for longer than is comfortable, then shrugs and looks down at the research on the table. He gestures at one folder, looking pensive.

“All right. So, it’s not something that can clear it out completely, which is why I didn’t mention it. Cas’ll still be an anchor.”

“Yeah, but all your worrying about him turning on us, it’ll push that back, right?” Dean asks.

There’s another stretched out moment before Sam nods. He doesn’t look up at Dean. Well, screw him. He’s in his focused, ‘the mission before all’ frame of mind, and, yeah, if destroying the anchor is the way to get rid of the Darkness then they’ll have to work on that, but they don’t have to just give up on Cas. Sam can try to ignore anything that might help Cas in favour of a laser-focus on his solution, but Sam rushing after a solution without thinking about the collateral damage is how Charlie’s ended up dead. Dean needs to be the one to apply the breaks, here.

“It might,” Sam says, at last. 

“Then we’re trying it,” Dean says. “Hannah, you got those blades? We’re taking them to Cas and we’re trying this spell of Sam’s to give him a scrub. We’ll work on the next steps after. I mean, we got an Archangel we can ask, now. One who isn’t half octopus.”

“I have them,” Hannah says. “Would I…would I be able to speak to Michael?”

“Why?” Dean asks.

The quiet is long enough that he turns to check on the angel. She’s standing with her hands by her sides, her head bent forwards. For a moment Dean thinks she’s…turned off or something, but she looks up at him and there’s something like longing or hope in those dark eyes. He thinks he preferred them when they were blue.

“Castiel spoke to me, but he didn’t let me ask questions. Not really. Perhaps Michael will. There are things in Heaven which still need attending to. Perhaps he has advice which will help me with that.”

“Sure,” Dean says. “Why not? You want to get work advice from the guy who was ready to shut it all down, I’m sure Sam can set you up. After we get the blades to Cas.”

She doesn’t look keen, but she nods and leaves the room, the sound of the front door opening and closing telling Dean she’s left the house. He hopes that isn’t some miscalculation. Hannah doesn’t strike him as the sort to cut and run without giving any hint of it. 

He turns back to Sam.

“What do you need for the spell?”

It doesn’t take long. It seems, with the exception of Grace, that they have everything they need, and Sam’s pretty sure that Cas’ own Grace will work, even though it won’t be in the bowl with the other ingredients. He hands Dean a page of notes to check through and as far as Dean can tell it makes sense. His grasp of ancient languages isn’t as good as Sam’s, but the annotations in the margin match up with the ingredients Sam says they need. Sam also lays out the other files he’s brought and makes Dean look at the page on his laptop. It’s all the information Sam could find corroborating Michael’s story, obscure footnotes and myths from a dozen cultures that, added together, could mean what Sam says they do. Or they could mean nothing. Dean’s not sold on allegory as a means of fighting a Darkness even God had trouble with.

He’s still holding out when they’re loading the car and Hannah reappears, standing at the end of Jody’s drive with a huge bag in either hand and another slung across her back. 

“Where’d you stash them?” Dean asks. “Another State?”

“No,” Hannah says. “I left them in a motel room. Castiel showed me how to book one when I was travelling with him.”

After that, it’s just a case of getting the blades into the car. Dean offers Hannah her choice of seats, but she shakes her head, insisting she will keep Jody company. Dean manages to steer Sam away from asking why Hannah doesn’t want to be around Cas. That is not a conversation that needs to happen.

The warehouse is sitting in shadows when they arrive, the sun edging its way towards dusk and the moon showing in the sky. Dean pulls the bags out of the car, leaving Sam to bring the materials for the spell, and heads to the open door. 

“Hey, Cas, you in here?” he calls, when he can’t immediately see anyone inside. 

To be fair, he can’t see anything of the inside. He thought the near-evening light would mean his eyes didn’t have to adapt so much to the interior, but it’s inky in there.

A rustle of sound warns him just before Castiel steps into the patch of light by the door, his face almost expressionless. The dragging and slithering behind him tells Dean that the wings and the rest of the Lovecraftian make-over are still present, but he can’t really make them out. The shadows seem to be clinging to them. He can’t see any of the extra eyes, not one little galaxy swirling on Cas’ extra body.

It would almost be enough to let Dean pretend Cas is his usual self, but his skin… It’s gotten worse. The skin of Cas’ throat is covered in swirling lines, fracturing and feathering away into smaller and smaller patterns as the marks reach up round his jaw and onto his cheeks. 

Dean hears Sam’s footsteps and the gasp.

“Dean.” Sam’s shock and horror are easy to hear.

“He’s fine. Aren’t you, Cas?” Dean says, before his brother can get any more out. 

The angel, or archangel, tilts his head, his eyes narrowing as his gaze slides across Dean and beyond, no doubt latching on to Sam.

“Give me the blades,” he says.

“Uh, wait,” Sam answers, stepping up next to Dean with his hand out, like that’ll be enough to stop this version of Cas if he decides to just reach out and take. “We have something to try first. Something to help you.”

“No,” Cas says. “I must have the blades. That is all I need from you.”

“You can have the blades when you’ve had your bath, Cas,” Dean says, and winces when his brain catches up with what he just said. Still, it seems to confuse the guy enough that he doesn’t make another demand just yet.

“This will work better if we do it outside,” Sam says. At Dean’s questioning look he goes on. “Cosmic harmonies or something. Just come out and we’ll get this done.”

Cas looks back at Dean, who shrugs.

“He says it’ll help. You have to feel weird with all that…that.” Dean waves his hand at Cas as he speaks, trying to indicate the dark lines snaking over most of Cas’ exposed skin.

“It is…less than ideal,” Cas allows.

Dean thought he was prepared, but as Cas steps outside, his wings and tentacles trail after him, at least half of them not moving on their own any more. A few of the eyes open and close as he goes, but most stay dark. Disturbing though Dean finds these alien limbs, seeing them in this state is even worse. He tears his eyes away and helps Sam set up, not even arguing when Sam orders him around. The sooner they can get Cas cleaned up, the better. Then they can work out how to use any information Michael might have that’s actually useful. 

Cas stands in the center of the circle Sam’s creating, staring around at the sigils and lines as they appear. He stays quiet, for the most part, answering Dean in monosyllables when asked how he’s doing, if he’s got any further with a plan to fight the Darkness. Dean isn’t sure if Cas is really listening. When he looks up from grinding some root or other into the mixture Sam wants in the copper bowl, he catches sight of Cas’ eyes. They’re dark and distant, focused on nothing. Maybe he’s considering walking out of the now mostly drawn circle and going for the blades. This close, Dean is almost sure the angel can feel them. If they’re somehow a part of him, which freaky as that is, seems to be the case, then surely Cas must be able to sense the things. 

“Won’t be long, now, Cas,” Dean says.

Cas doesn’t react, and Dean turns to share a look with Sam. What he gets is Sam looking down at a piece of paper, his lips moving as though he’s memorising something. Great, neither one of them is listening. 

“We nearly set, Sammy?” he asks.

Sam stops muttering, but he doesn’t look at Dean. 

“It should be over in a few minutes.”

“And then you can have the blades, Cas. Right, Sam?”

Crouching down, Sam sets the paper in a folder at his feet and looks critically at the bowl. 

“You should step back,” he says to Dean. “The notes make it sound like it could be a bit rough round the edges.”

Dean glances at Cas, who hasn’t moved, and back at Sam, who’s reaching over to sketch in one last line to complete the circle. Well. Okay, then. Never let it be said that Dean Winchester is blase about safety. He takes three careful steps back. That’s as far as he’s going. 

Sam shakes his head, clearly able to see how far Dean hasn’t moved back, even without looking round properly, and pulls a bundle of matches out of his pocket. He’s still working on the last lines with his other hand, and he looks awkward, like he’s suddenly decided he has to rush this.

At last, there’s a change in Cas. He looks confused. As Sam paints the last symbol in, Cas’ brow furrows and his eyes snap up.

“Why is there-”

Sam flicks a lit match into the small copper bowl at his feet and Cas cuts off. At the same time, Sam bellows out sounds that might be a language, but it’s not one Dean’s ever heard, and smoke pours out of each line in the circle.

“This what’s meant to happen?” he asks. That smoke is worrying and from what he can see of Cas, the angel is standing rigid. It doesn’t look like something meant to help him.

“It’s exactly what’s meant to happen,” Sam says. “I’m sorry, Dean.”

The smoke billows white, then red, then black, churning sparks that stink of burnt ozone. There’s a buzz that starts under Dean’s skin and rises rapidly, blotting out anything else Sam might be saying, and he struggles to make out Cas through the dense cloud.

When a gust of smoke leaves a clear path, he glimpses his friend standing in that circle, his head thrown back and his eyes open. All of his eyes are open, though hardly any of them glow. The ones that do flicker, light spasming in shades of blue, red, black. Still, too many of those extra limbs lie limp, but the ones with life in them are crooked, tensed up, and Cas’ human hands are half-way to his head, as though he wants to grab on to his temples and can’t quite close the distance, his fingers crooked where they dig at the air. 

It takes Dean too long to match Cas’ open mouth with the screaming buzz of noise. Whatever else this spell is doing, it’s making an archangel scream.


	37. Sacrifice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short one, because I lost the whole fic - seem to have deleted it from Scrivener. Not sure how. Anyway, I've had to go again from where I was, so this is it just for now, but more is coming.

Dean reaches Sam in seconds, hauling him away from the bowl. It’s too late. He knows it’s too late, but that doesn’t stop him from trying.

“Put it out!” he yells. “Sam, put the spell out!”

Sam shakes his head, not even trying to fight his way out of Dean’s arms. He shouts back, over the sound of Cas screaming, over the roar and the buzz that’s trying to blanket out everything else.

“I can’t! It’s done!”

Dean growls and throws Sam aside, falling to his knees by the bowl and tipping it over, rising only to stamp on the contents until they stop smoking. It does nothing, nothing to stop the smoke and the screams. Through that smoke, he can see Cas, every now and then, when the wind blows it clear enough, and the archangel’s got his hands to his head, now, his fingers clutching at his own hair hard enough that it looks like he could be tearing some loose. Blue spills from under his eyelids, from his mouth. Whatever this is…

“What have you done?” Dean spits at Sam, as his brother returns to the circle, keeping a wary few feet between the two of them.

“What I had to do,” he says. He sounds regretful, but there’s no sign he’s really sorry about what he’s done. Sorry it had to be done, is more the tone. “It’s necessary, Dean.”

“It’s killing Cas.” And the venom he wants to put into that just isn’t there, taken over by a lethargy, a resignation he’s sick of feeling. 

“Cas was already dead,” Sam says. “He was dead the moment that Darkness touched him. Hell, Dean, he was dead when Crowley rebooted him. Our Cas, the Cas we love, has been gone since at least then. This is just…this is just putting him out of his misery.”

And the horrifying thing is, Sam sounds like he really means it, like he’s already spent time grieving, coming to terms with the loss. 

“Cas is dying right now,” Dean says. “You can hear him dying. You can hear him hurting, Sammy.”

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Sam says, and it’s not enough. It’ll never be enough.

Dean opens his mouth to beg Sam to do something, anything, to at least stop Cas from hurting, to get him out of there, but he’s cut off by the ground. It shakes.

Dean stumbles. Sam does, too, but he catches himself faster, reaches out and pulls Dean back, away from the circle and the seraph whose whole body is now suffused with smoke. Dean fights it, but Sam is strong, and he’s implacable. Before Dean can dig his heels in and push back enough to make a difference, he’s over by the Impala, caged by Sam’s arms. From this distance, all he can see of Cas are the stiff, pained movements of tentacles and tails, of wings studded with what should have been galaxy eyes. 

The ground still shakes, the movements growing stronger, and Sam leans them against the car, letting her keep them upright. He won’t answer when Dean demands to know what’s happening.

“Just wait,” Sam says, instead. “Just wait. It’ll all be over soon. I promise. Just wait.”

Another shake, harder this time, knocks Sam off balance, and Dean lashes out, catching his brother’s leg and breaking free of his hold. He makes it partway back before Sam’s on him, knocking him down and pinning him to the earth. 

“Dean!”

Sam has time for no more before the earth in front of them cracks, crazed patterns in the ground forming an intricate lattice all the way around Cas’ circle, and the smoke burns a pure, shining blue. Grace blue. 

When it clears, the smoke is gone, the fire is gone, and Cas is on the ground, no part of him moving. Next to him, looking down at Cas with something almost like pity, is John Winchester. No. No, not John. He’s young, and he’s full of a power even John never had. 

Sam says it first, rising to his knees, still with a hand on Dean. 

“Michael.”


	38. Carving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't all hate me. Or at the very least form an orderly queue. I am British. I insist on proper queue etiquette.

Sam seems to be pressing Dean into the ground, as though willing him to stay out of this. For the moment, while his brain catches up with what’s happening, Dean does just that.

“I did what you said,” Sam says. “I brought you up.”

“Yes,” Michael says. 

He’s calm. That’s something Dean had almost forgotten, how calm Michael was. He’d lead the apocalypse, but he’d always seemed…separate from it, somehow. Cas used to look at the world, at the people in it, like they were something he was looking at from a great distance, from a great height, but with Cas, even in the early days, there’d been an appreciation there, a wish to bridge the gap. Michael’s is the calm of a scientist looking down on lab-rats. No. No, that’s not right. Lab-rats are alive. Michael looks at people as tools. 

No wonder Cas reacted when Dean called him a hammer. To Michael, it’s likely the lower angels are hammers. And you don’t cry when a hammer gets broken. You just get a new hammer.

But Cas isn’t a lower angel. Isn’t, because Dean refuses to switch to the past tense. Cas isn’t dead, no matter how still he is, no matter that every scrap of light and life is gone from his body. From this distance, Cas is a pile of inhuman limbs, as lifeless and heaping as that whale Cas dragged into Jody’s garden. His back is to Dean, his human body mostly hidden by the struts and spurs of his angelic form. 

Michael turns his head, looks down at Cas. It’s just possible there’s something like sorrow there.

“A shame.” Michael’s tone is measured. “I had forgotten he was so truly my brother. To remember him and to lose him, so soon after. Tell me, Sam,” he says, still looking at Cas, “what was it like, when Gabriel took your brother from you, time and time again? Did it burn? What was it like to watch your younger brother fall beside you into the Pit?” He crouches, rests his hand on Cas. Dean grits his teeth and traps the words that want to hurl themselves at the archangel for daring to lay a hand on Dean’s angel. Michael shifts his gaze to Sam. “What was it like to know you had escaped the Cage and left your younger brother behind?”

“You said Adam wasn’t ever in there,” Sam says, but Dean can hear the thread of panic in Sam’s words. 

“He wasn’t,” Michael says, still measured, still calm, “but you didn’t know that.”

Under Michael’s hand, Cas rolls over, his limbs falling heavily onto the earth. Dean can see his face. The eyes are open. Staring. Blank. Unless that’s just because Dean’s too far away to see properly. Please let it be that. 

Michael regards his brother, moving his hand to trace along the line of one of Cas’ wings.

“Lucifer and I were always closer,” he says. “Cassiel and the others, they knew that. But I still loved them. All of them. Always, it seems I must sacrifice my brothers for the sake of my father’s peace.”

That’s it. That’s too much. Dean shoves upwards, pushing Sam off and making it to his feet before his brother can catch him. Whatever game Sam’s playing, it’s one Michael’s set up the board for. That much is clear. And how dare he speak of loving Cas, when he’s so happy to use him as a game-piece? 

“Like Hell you love him!” Dean shouts. “Like Hell it’s for any fucking peace, your lousy father’s or anyone else’s. You could have helped us stop your whining, spoiled brat of a brother. It was your side that made sure it all kicked off! And this? This is just one of a long line of crappy consequences from that. Don’t you dare talk about peace. You’ve brought us, brought Cas, nothing but fighting and sacrificing and pain, and you dare-” 

He cuts off, half choking on his own rage, and wipes a hand over his mouth. He has to half turn from the scene, giving himself a moment, or he’s going to rush at Michael, try to finish him with the angel blade he has on him, and it’s not an archangel blade. He has to keep his head, here. He has to get Michael away from Cas.

“Still so full of righteous rage, Dean,” Michael says. “More rage than you had.” There’s a pause, and Dean swings back round to see Michael studying him, his eyes narrowing. “You’ve been touched by Hell more fully than before. You’ve been touched by the Darkness. I see my brother’s sickness became your own. You could have been spared that, had you said ‘yes’.”

“Well, sorry for messing up your ride,” Dean says, throwing his arms out to the side. “But this cab still ain’t for hire.”

He takes a step to the side, drawing Michael’s attention with him, and the archangel stands, leaving Cas behind. Good. Dean paces further away, an itch under his skin telling him that Cas’ older brother should be nowhere near Cas.

“So you told Sam to throw this party?” Dean asks. “To get you up here? Why? You planning on picking up where you left off? Where’s your bunk-buddy?”

“Lucifer is meant to be here,” Michael says. “An alteration in the plan I didn’t agree to.”

“We don’t need both of you,” Sam says. “You were the leader of the Host. Lead them again.”

“I had six fellow archangels the last time we fought the Darkness,” Michael says. “I had a full Host. I had my father’s backing. Not everyone survived. You expect me to recreate the feat with a broken Host and no-one else? You were supposed to ensure there was enough power to break us both from the Cage.”

He doesn’t sound cross. Not exactly. Disappointed, more like. 

Dean glances back at Sam and sees him squaring his shoulders. The way he’s looking at Michael only draws attention to the fact he isn’t looking at Dean.

“If I’d let him have those swords, he might have been able to break out of the circle,” Sam says.

“What?” Dean’s torn, torn between getting Michael’s attention back and pulling him away from Cas, and storming back to Sam to shake clear answers out of him. “You were meant to give him the angel-blades?”

“If Sam had let Cassiel have his swords, there would have been enough power in the spell to free us both,” Michael says, but Dean didn’t really need it spelling out.

Sam kept Cas weaker than he could have been, to make sure he’d be trapped. To make sure he’d… Sam had said once, way back when they were facing War, that he scared himself with how far he was willing to go. If Cas… If Sam’s made Cas a lamb to…

“You tricked me,” Dean says, anger or tears or something clogging up his throat. “You tricked me and you tricked Cas.”

“I had to,” Sam says. “Cas was infected. We need an archangel who’s clean, who can fix this.”

“Clean? Sam, there ain’t nothing clean about him. He’s got the blood of every angel who’s died since I was sent to Hell right there on his hands. Doesn’t matter whether he did the deed himself or not. He started it all. He decided to act out daddy’s plan and smashed up the house to do it. That don’t leave a guy clean.”

He senses Michael before he turns and sees him, closer now than he was, and had the guy always had such an intense gaze? It’s fucking freaky, because the chief of God’s angels is wearing Dean’s dad, but it doesn’t feel like that. Dean looks at Michael and there can be no doubt that John Winchester is nowhere in the picture. Back in the past, when he’d run into his dad, he’d been hit with how hot the guy was. But it’d been his dad. With the archangel in the driver’s seat, and his dad gone, it’s harder to ignore how beautiful he his. How young. 

It just makes this whole mess more horrifying. 

“You think I’m lying, Dean?” Michael asks. “You don’t think it saddens me deeply to see Cassiel like this? I’m his big brother. It was my job to care for him, to care for all of them, and yet my father left me to take his role, too. It’s a hard job, isn’t it, Dean, to take a father’s place? No matter how hard we try, we can never truly be our fathers. But I am what you have.”

“I’d take Cas over you any day of the week, you fucking murderer,” Dean hisses.

Michael is far too close, now. He’s away from Cas, sure, but he’s close enough for Dean to feel pinned in place by that stare.

“Sam cast the spell that killed Cassiel. Not me. But I’m afraid you won’t like what has to happen next. Don’t fight it, Dean. Sam and I will take care of it. Your brother will help me to take care of mine. Isn’t that right, Sam?”

“Right.” Sam sounds sick. Determined. But sick. 

Michael is still between Dean and Cas, and Sam’s close enough to get to Dean in seconds. Still, he assesses the distances, tenses to move. He has no idea what he’ll do once he reaches Cas, and if he’s learned anything lately it’s that he hasn’t learned a damn thing when it comes to Sam: he’ll still let the universe burn rather than kill his brother. Knocking Sam out, though…that, Dean can do. And maybe Cas is awake, playing possum, just waiting for the right moment to draw some sigil or blast some Grace. He’s probably waiting until Dean’s close enough that he can shield him from the effects. That sounds like what Cas would do. 

Sam’s hand on his shoulder startles him. 

“Don’t Dean,” Sam says. “Just don’t.”

Dean feels a burst of heat, then cold, slither down his spine, and his limbs turn heavy. He feels Sam’s hand shift, feels both of Sam’s hands catch him.

“What…are…?” he tries to ask, but his tongue is heavy, too, leaden and unwieldy in his mouth. 

Sam lowers him to the ground, settling him on his side. He speaks softly, fiercely, like he wants to press these words into Dean.

“I can turn you away. You don’t have to watch.”

“Fuck…you,” Dean manages. “Don’t…”

“Dean,” Sam says, “you don’t want to watch this. You don’t. And I don’t want you to. But it has to be done. Michael’s here, but he needs as much strength as he can get. I’m sorry, but this is necessary.”

“It is necessary,” Michael says, and Dean can see him, back near Cas, a sword glinting over Cas’ head. “Turn him away, Sam. We must act swiftly if we’re to save the remaining energy.”

Sam pulls at Dean’s shoulder, turning him, but Dean fights. It’s all he can do to make it harder for Sam, to make Sam leave him only dragged mostly around, and Sam gives up, leaving Dean with his face pressed into the dirt. This is a nightmare. This isn’t real. Sam isn’t working with Michael, hasn’t pulled him from the Cage. Cas isn’t…

A sound of tearing meat steals the breath Dean has left. More follow, the gristle in them all too clear. Bile rises in Dean’s throat, and he fights again, gathering everything he has and writhing. It’s slow, far too slow. He’s heard sounds like it before, when he’s been cutting up a monster’s body for disposal, and that summer he got a few week’s work at a slaughterhouse. A sound like sail-cloth being ripped comes next. The wings. That could only have been Cas’ wings. 

Inch by slow inch, Dean shifts himself back round, whatever spell Sam’s cast on him making every movement a battle. The dirt under his cheeks is sticky, part mud. It takes him until he’s most of the way around to realise he’s crying. His tears are turning the earth to water. 

“Michael!” Sam’s voice is abrupt, aggressive. The other sounds stop. Dean’s nearly there, nearly turned enough to see, but not quite. He strains to move faster as Sam speaks again, an edge to his words that make it sound like he’ll throw up. “You said it’d be quick. You said-”

“I’m an angel, Sam,” Michael interrupts. He’s still calm. How the fuck can he still be calm? He’s carving Cas up. Dean knows what he’s hearing. Michael’s own little brother, and he’s calm when he talks. “For us, ‘quick’ has a different meaning. If you have any mercy, you won’t pause in your task.”

Another heave, and that’s it. Dean can see. The bile rises stronger. Fuck. 

Michael’s got one of Cas’ wings in his left hand, the blade in his right halfway through the folds, it’s passage leaving ragged pieces hanging from the bone. Sam’s got another blade, has one tentacle lying at his feet, mostly severed from Cas’ body. Dean can see Cas’ face, can see the eyes…can see the dim glow of light in them.

That’s why Sam’s stopped. It’s one thing to cut up a dead angel, however much you loved the guy. It’s another thing altogether to do it when the angel’s still alive. 

Cas is alive, and Michael’s cutting him to pieces.


	39. Fuse

Dean’s stomach clenches, spasms, heaves. He spits bile onto the ground, the stink of it filling his nostrils, bitter and thin. 

If Cas were dead, this would still be horrific, would still be one of the worst things he’s witnessed in a very long line of nightmarish things, and Dean isn’t sure how he’d square using parts of someone he knows, loves, even if it would be to stop the world being destroyed. But…he let Sam fall into the cage. He asked Benny to let Dean cut off the guy’s head. Dean told Benny to come back, but that brother didn’t. That brother stayed dead. It’d been to save the brother who’d always come first, but…

Save Cas, first. Have an ethical breakdown later.

With the sharp taste of nausea still in his mouth, he gathers his strength and tries to come up with something, anything, that’ll pull both Sam and Michael away long enough to…

He can’t seem to finish a thought. And he has no idea how he’ll get Cas out of there. If he had a plan to get himself out, he’d have used it before letting someone slice into his wing. Dean can’t shift Cas out of there even without having to fight off his own brother. The brother who’s stopped cutting, who’s staring down at his own hands in horror.

Sam’s got that clammy look to him, the one that says he’s a small step from hurling. Dean’s seen it way too many times in his life to mistake it. 

“Why are you hurting Cas, Sammy?” Dean rasps, barely loud enough to be heard. He only needs it to be barely. Sam’s eyes flick to Dean. “You think this is helping? Carving him up? Like he’s meat?”

Sam looks at Dean, at the blade he holds, back at Dean. He’s thinking. Processing. Dean can only hope to throw in data that will lead Sam to a better conclusion than this.

“How can this be right?” Dean says. He has to stop, to cough, black splotches gathering at the edges of his vision. 

Before the coughing fit passes, Sam turns to Michael.

“I didn’t know he’d be able to feel this,” he says. “You said-”

“If you had done as I said,” Michael breaks in, speaking the way a caring father would to a child who had not quite learned a lesson, “Lucifer would be here to help. It would be a great deal faster. And the spell would have killed Cassiel. It is because of you that we must do this while he lives, Sam.” 

But Sam has never been the kind to listen to a father.

He reels back from Cas, the knife lax in his hand, his chest heaving as he stumbles to a halt near the edge of the circle. For a long, stretched moment, he doesn’t seem to know what to do, what to say, his mouth slightly open as though he’s forgotten how to shape words. 

“Sam!” Dean doesn’t know what’s going on in Sam’s head. For all the codewords and plans and years of fighting together, he sometimes feels like the inside of Sam’s head is a steel box that he’s never seen inside. “Sammy, stop this. Do something.”

Because Dean can’t. Dean still can’t do more than shift weakly, a bit at a time, the nausea threatening to wash back up at any moment. He doesn’t know if Sam hears him, if Sam’s hearing anything just now, with that wide, glassy look in his eyes. 

Michael watches Sam, his own blade still, and still buried in Cas’ wing. Sam’s the hinge-point here. Whatever move Sam makes, the rest of this will turn on it. 

And it doesn’t make any sense. Michael’s out. He’s out and he’s Michael. He’s more powerful than Cas has ever been, even now they know more about his true past. Why does he need to wait on Sam?

“No.” The word is ragged, barely there, but it is there. Sam’s eyes focus, travelling over Cas with a look Dean can’t decipher. “No. Not while he’s alive. It’s… It’s…”

Dean wants to shout, to scream at Sam, but he’s wracked by a burst of pain so intense he spasms around it. Cas being alive isn’t a bad thing. All Sam’s going to do is goad Michael into an execution. 

“It’s what we have,” Michael says. “Even my blade isn’t going to kill him now. Not cleanly. Only the spell could have done that, and you chose to alter the plan. I should have seen it. After all, it’s in your nature. To go against the plan. To rebel. You truly are my brother’s vessel.”

That shakes Sam. Dean gasps through his pain as he watches Michael’s words hit. Sam shakes his head.

“No. I am not, I will never… I agreed to a plan to stop the Darkness, not to torture Cas.”

This is all taking too long. Don’t either of them realise that Cas is still in pain? Dean can see the blue, still. It’s latched onto Dean. Hold on. Hold on, Cas. He has no idea if the angel can hear his prayers. Cas gives no sign, either way. 

With Michael and Sam locked in their struggle over him, Cas lies on his stomach, his face twisted toward Dean, and one hand outstretched. The fingers press into the earth, as though trying to find something to hold on to. 

Dean’s fingers twitch. If he could just reach Cas, somehow, it’d help. It’d have to. He can’t think of anything else. 

The pain fades, receding. He has no faith it’ll stay gone, but he can speak, he can pull himself a fraction of an inch closer.

“Cas,” he calls. “Don’t…”

He has no idea what he’s begging Cas not to do. Don’t die? Don’t leave him? Don’t suffer?

Whatever it is, the blue of Cas’ eyes flares. It isn’t even for the others to see, but Dean does. He nods, urging Cas on, hoping there’s something Cas knows to do. Can do. 

“There’s no other way?” Sam demands, and Dean doesn’t look away from Cas to see what Sam’s doing, but Sam sounds like he’s doubting his decision. “No other way to stop this?”

Michael is as calm as ever. Too many years ruling over heaven in his father’s name. It must be that. 

“No other way,” he says. “The last time, our plan failed because my father loved his son too much. Lucifer became the anchor for the Darkness. He tethered it. He was supposed to contain it.” 

Dean knows that Michael is talking to Sam, but it feels like he’s talking to Dean. Sam must already know this. Does Michael hope to win Dean round, that Dean will tell Sam to do this? 

“But my father could not bear to watch his brightest child be torn apart, be scattered, which he must be to dissipate the effects of pure potential. So he created the Mark instead. And all of that potential twisted Lucifer until he was no longer my shining brother, no longer my father’s brightest son. So you see, Sam, as I have already told you, Cassiel is now the anchor, and he must be scattered. You are the one who is making us do this while he is alive. His suffering will not end until he is in pieces. If you care for him, you will cease this protest and complete your appointed task.”

Dean sees Cas’ lip curl moments before his fingers dig right into the earth. He sees the look of furious concentration of Cas’ face, sees, through rips in the angel’s sleeve, the dark lines writhing along his forearm and across his hands. He can’t work out what Cas is doing, but he hopes it’s good. He hopes it’s some spell to blast Michael out past Pluto, or better yet to kill him outright. 

But Michael is still talking, unaffected. Sam is still listening.

“He is already hurting,” Michael says, “because of what you have done. You and Dean, breaking another seal. Your only hope now is to finish this. You have sacrificed yourself before, Sam. Is it really so much harder to sacrifice someone else? Someone who isn’t even your own species?”

“He’s not… Cas is…” 

Sam has lost the ability to get to the end of a thought, it seems. Part of Dean feels a vicious satisfaction. Sam should be affected by this. What he’s done, what he’s possibly still doing, is worse than every time they’ve killed a meat-suit, worse than every time they’ve let someone else die to push a plan through. It shouldn’t be. Dean knows that, knows their morality is warped and pulled inward, but it’s the morality he’s caught in. He can’t achieve escape velocity from this sense that some people matter more. More to him, anyway. And this is worse than anyone else Sam has killed, because this is Cas, and Cas can’t die even if it kills the world to have him live.

Maybe Dean hasn’t learned anything by killing Death, after all. 

In the lull, with both Sam and Michael quiet, no words spilling out over his mangled body, Cas grits his teeth and pushes his fingers further into the dirt. The lines ripple and…snake out into the ground. Cas isn’t doing anything about Michael. He’s doing something with the Darkness, with its threads. 

“Cas?” Sam asks, as though he isn’t sure he’s got the right name.

Sam’s noticed Cas is more than just alive. He’s noticed that Cas is awake and doing something.

Michael’s shout of anger is sudden, the calm shattering, and Dean pulls his attention from Cas’ hand to see Michael hurl himself at the other archangel, wrapping an arms around Cas’ neck and pulling his head back, the angle enough to kill a human. His other hand reaches for Cas’ wrist, tries to pull those fingers out of the dirt. They don’t move. 

Both of the angels are snarling, now, a noise that starts in their angry human mouths and ripples out, their true voices picking up the sound and amplifying it. 

Sam falls back further, covering his ears. Dean barely has enough strength to get his hands near his head and it’s not going to be enough. He’s going to feel that stabbing pain any moment. His ears are going to-

A flash of silver comes from left-field, a low rumble of the ground following it. 

The screaming stops.

Michael looks down at his own chest, disbelief on his face. He’s been knocked back on his haunches, still crouching over Cas, who still has his head pulled back. But Cas’ hand is free to burrow into the ground all it wants. Michael is reaching now for the angel blade sticking out of his chest.

Sam’s voice sounds clearer, as though he’s half-awake now instead of mostly asleep. 

“Hannah?”

“Get away from him, Michael,” Hannah’s voice rings out, and Dean has never been so glad to hear her. 

Michael touches the blade, strokes his forefinger along its edge, and looks up, past Dean. The disbelief is still there, but it’s of a different kind. 

“You think this blade can stop me, Hannah?” he asks. “This is no archangel blade. Perhaps, in my absence, you have forgotten what an archangel truly is.”

“Perhaps,” Hannah says. If she’s afraid, she’s hiding it well. “Or perhaps you’ve forgotten what it means to be an angel at all. A true angel protects creation, protects potential. Nurtures it. All you have wanted to do since our father left is to destroy.”

“You would serve Cassiel over me?” Michael asks, and that anger is still there, but its tempered now, so quickly, into something almost like his usual calm. 

“Castiel,” Hannah says, and Dean can imagine her standing with her head up, her gaze steady, “has taught me that I don’t serve either of you. But I do serve Heaven, and I do protect the humans left in our care. The whole world left in our care. I will throw every blade at you that I have, Michael, before I let you do this.”

Too quickly for Dean to follow it properly, Michael pulls the blade from his chest, leans forward, and rams it down through Cas’ hand. 

Dean long ago became tired of hearing Cas scream.

When it fades, when Dean can focus again, Michael holds two blades, another three already stabbing into Cas’ arm. The next one goes through Cas’ shoulder. 

Even as Dean watches, yet another blade hits Michael, and he pulls that one free, as well.

“Does this ease your frustration, little sister?” Michael asks, stabbing down. And again. And again. He doesn’t stop, catching each blade and finding a home for it in Cas’ body. Dean wonders if Michael intends to split Cas in half just by this. “Even when you see it does no good? Will you throw all of your blades at me?”

“You are arrogant,” Hannah says. “And those aren’t my blades.”

Like he was waiting for the signal, Cas’ eyes light up. Not just the ones in his human head. It’s all of them, even the ones slashed through with those dark lines. The glow illuminates Michael, casting his face into odd angles. Michael yells something. Dean thinks it’s in Enochian. Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to do anything. 

An extra burst of adrenaline has Dean curling into a ball as the light explodes, stronger than it ever has before. Then again, Cas has never taken in more than one blade at a time before. Dean has no idea how many are in his flesh now.

When the light clears, Michael is on his back, unmoving. So is Sam. Cas is lit up with blue stars, his damaged body still mutilated, but new limbs, healthy ones, writhe among the injured ones. Cas is huge. His hand is still in the earth, and now other limbs, tentacles and tails and even the tip of one wing, push into the dirt. 

Dean feels hands on him, feels himself being pulled up until he’s sitting with his back to someone solid.

“Hannah?” he asks, because for all he knows she didn’t come alone. 

“Little help, here,” Jody’s voice answers, but aimed somewhere behind Dean.

Hannah appears in front of Dean, crouching and laying a hand on his forehead. The rush of tingling warmth rushes through him and he can move. He pulls away from Jody and lets her help him stand.

“What the fuck is going on?” he asks. “Why are the two of you here?”

“You’re welcome,” Jody says, the pinch of a frown telling Dean she isn’t letting that go even if the world is ending. 

“Sorry. No. Thanks. But why are you here?”

Hannah speaks up, her attention now more on Cas and whatever is going on with the burrowing.

“I heard Castiel scream. And I felt Michael arrive. Jody brought me.”

“And have you got any clue what he’s doing now?” A cold thought slithers through Dean’s brain. “Is that even still Cas? Was Sam right? Have we lost him anyway?” 

Should Dean have let Sam get on with it?

“I don’t know,” Hannah says, “but…he’s told me it has to happen. He’s said it’s the right thing.”

At Dean’s incredulous look, because he’s been here longer than Hannah and he hasn’t heard Cas say anything, she taps her temple.

“Angel-radio.” She doesn’t sound entirely sure of the term. “He’s an archangel now. He can manipulate the signals much better than before.”

Is that what Cas had been doing, when he’d just been lying there, letting himself be carved up? Sending some Morse-code shit to Hannah?

“So we do what? Just stand here and see what happens?” Dean asks. 

“No.” Hannah finally looks away from Cas, her head turning until she must be looking at Sam. “We clear the area. Your brother tried to kill Castiel,” she says. “Even so, he wants us to take Sam to safety along with you.”

Dean doesn’t have time to ask what they need to be safe from. Hannah moves, but she heads towards Michael.

“That’s us with the giant,” Jody says, slapping Dean on the shoulder and striding to Sam. “Come on. We’ve got to get him in the car.”

Dean almost tells Jody to go and help Hannah, but when he looks around he sees that Hannah already has Michael up and partway to Jody’s car. 

“No,” he shouts. When Hannah turns her head, he points to the Impala. “My car. She’s warded.”

Not against archangels, but it’s still got to be better than leaving the eons-long Commander of the Heavenly Host in Jody’s car. At least Dean’s faced off against archangels before. If he had Michael’s blade, he’d be tempted to end the bastard now, but he can’t see it, and Hannah seems intent on getting the guy away, not on killing him. 

Sam’s always heavier than Dean expects, no matter how many times he has to lug his brother around, and by the time Dean’s heaved the guy into the car, slamming the door and checking that Hannah and Jody are headed to the other car, he’s sweating and breathing heavily. 

Hannah’s slid away from his attempts to ask what, exactly, is going on, and he stares back at Cas. That blue glow is constant, the dark lines highlighting how brilliant Cas’ grace really is, and Dean still has no idea what his friend is up to. Because that is still his friend. That is still his Cas. It doesn’t matter what Sam’s said, what he’s been told by Michael. 

And when Sam wakes up, they are going to have a very long talk.


	40. Scatter

At Hannah’s insistence, Dean takes off, dust churning up behind the Impala as he leaves the warehouse behind. Leaves Cas behind. 

Jody’s car tails him, and they make it maybe a mile down the road before the whole world shakes. The road bucks, like it’s trying to throw them off, and Dean rides out the first quake with hands clenched around the wheel and his with his heart trying to crawl out of his throat. 

“What the fuck…?” he hisses, as he pulls to a stop, checking only quickly that Sam and Michael are still out cold before bolting from the car to meet Jody and Hannah.

Jody looks nearly as shaken as Dean feels, panting and staring with wide eyes at everything around her, but Hannah looks almost…satisfied. She’s standing with her back to Dean, looking back in the direction of the warehouse.

“Hannah?” Dean asks. “Hannah, what is it? What’s he fucking done?”

Because Dean has seen it too many times, Cas throwing his own health and sanity and life away as though they mean nothing, and maybe that’s partly Dean’s fault. Maybe Michael’s not the only one who can see people as tools, or at least act like he does. Still, Cas has always come back. Always.

“Hannah!”

She turns, her expression fierce, but it’s a fierce triumph.

“Look,” she says, and points at the road they’ve just travelled down.

Dean has to walk around Jody’s car to see what she means, Jody hot on his heels, and he hears her gasp as his own air dries up completely. He has no idea why Hannah’s so pleased about this. He should run, but he can’t make himself move. 

Dark lines snake across the ground, breaking and snarling and threading through the tarmac, through the grass at the side of the road, through the trees and crops and everything Dean can see. Those marks will be on them in minutes. 

“No,” he says, because it’s all his brain can come up with. He doesn’t know if it’s a denial, or an attempt to order the world to stop this. 

Hannah arrives by Dean’s side and takes his hand. He’s so rattled, he lets her. From her voice, she must be glowing, whether with joy or with grace or with both.

“This is his plan,” she says, and sounds as though, despite her words to Michael, she only just misses giving the pronoun a capital letter. Hannah has Cas on some kind of pedestal, even if she doesn’t serve him. “This is what he wanted.”

“To split the whole world apart?” Dean rasps, because those lines had split open people, had split open a whale, had been splitting Cas, no matter how much the angel had avoided saying it. Surely, they’ll do the same now they mark the earth. 

“No,” Hannah says, and she is firm, certain. “To save the whole world. Don’t you see, Dean? Michael said it. The Darkness is potential and it had to be scattered. How better than the share it with the whole world? How much more scattered can it get?”

“Dean.” Jody’s hand catches his other hand, and he finds himself standing between the two of them in a human chain as the lines race to them. “What do we do? Do we run?”

But if Hannah is right, and it looks like she is, those lines will get them wherever they go. Either she’s right, and this is their salvation, or they’ll only have to face this further down the road. Might as well get it over with. He sends a grim prayer to the universe. More of a curse. He wanted to hash it out with Sam, wanted to shove Michael so far back into the Cage that the guy would think he’d imagined ever leaving it, but instead he gets this: the three of them, standing together. 

“No point,” he says, and tightens him grip on their hands. 

The lines are only the length of a room away now, then the length of a car, of a person, of…

He flinches as the first one touches him, pulling Jody a step back, useless though that is. Hannah doesn’t budge. The line snakes up his boot, sinking in and spreading out, and he feels the utter cold, the burning heat, the endless desert and the depths of the ocean. It makes no sense, but it’s everything. It’s overwhelming. It’s time and space and growth and decay and life and death and…

It’s gone.

Jody’s hand is still in his, Hannah’s has slipped up his arm and holds him steady. 

“Are you both okay?” she asks. 

“Peachy,” Jody says. “It’s gone?”

“No,” Hannah says. “It’s a part of you, a part of everything it’s touched.”

Dean makes himself focus on the road. The marks are gone. Everything he saw them touch is clear. Spinning, dragging Jody round with him as Hannah lets go, he glares the other way. The ground right to the other side of the Impala is clear, but beyond it he can see the marks slithering on. At he watches, a dark line writhes into nothingness on the Impala’s side. When Hannah said the whole, she meant everything.

“Will that be enough?” Jody asks. “Will it, what, spread it out enough to make it safe?”

“Enough that it won’t twist and destroy,” Hannah says. “At least, that’s the theory.”

Dean lets it go for the moment. He’s too winded by the last few minutes to interrogate it further. He will. For now, though, it looks like it’s working. At the very least, none of them are husks of split meat. 

“And Cas?” he asks.

Hannah doesn’t answer, and he turns to see something far too close to apprehension take over her features. 

“Hannah?” She doesn’t look directly at him. “Hannah, is he still talking to you? Can you hear him?”

She swallows. Shakes her head. 

“Damn it.” Dean finally lets go of Jody’s hand, running his hand across his face. “All right. You, both of you, get out of here. I’m going back for Cas.”

“On your own?” Jody asks. “No.”

“You won’t be able to carry him on your own,” Hannah says.

Dean refuses to think about why he might need to carry Cas. Instead, hearing the resolve in their voices, he gives in, nods. 

“Fine. But I go first.”

It feels wrong to be heading right back to where they just were, but he has to know if Cas is okay, if he’s… Anyway, he has to know.

The world might be saved, and the jury’s still out on whether it’s worked, on whether there’ll be consequences to deal with, but right now Dean has to do some saving of his own.


	41. Crater

Sam jolts awake as they’re halfway back, the ugly part-snort as he jerks upright out of place. It’s too normal, too familiar from years of road trips.

“Don’t,” Dean says, before Sam can get a word out. “You’ve done enough. If we’re lucky, Cas has fixed this whole thing for us, even with you trying to slice him up like a turkey, so you just sit there and shut up.”

He feels Sam’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t look. Dean has to prioritise, here. Cas first. Sam, he’ll have to deal with later. By then, he might even have a clue how the handle it. He isn’t even going think about Michael yet.

Sam gets out of the car when it stops, ignoring Dean telling him to stay put, and Jody doesn’t say anything about it either way when she joins them a few seconds later. Hannah puts herself between Sam and the gaping crater that used to be a yard. 

There’s nothing left.

The circle is gone, the ground it was on is gone. Even the warehouse is gone. There’s no sign of Cas at all.

“Cas!” Dean yells. “Cas, you tell me where you are, damn it!”

“Dean,” Sam says, “if he was here-”

“I told you to shut up.”

He leaves Sam by the car and stands at the edge of the crater. It’s even deeper than it seemed, the sort of thing you could imagine going through to the core. The sides are steep, too steep to make it down safely. 

“He isn’t down there,” Hannah says. 

Dean didn’t even hear her arrive next to him. He scans the crater, straining to see the bottom clearly, and begs Cas to turn up. The angel hasn’t made an open grave for himself, here. He hasn’t. He hasn’t blasted himself into nothing, either. Dean won’t accept it. Hell, he’s seen Cas drown, seen him explode, and the bastard’s always come back. He isn’t going to write Cas off. He isn’t.

Hannah doesn’t need to look at him like that, like she wants to offer comfort. 

“He does this,” Dean says, trying to smile. “It’s like some sad addiction. He’ll make some big entrance, you just watch.”

It’s Jody who takes him by the shoulders and steers him back to the car, where Sam is now behind the wheel, his lips pressed together like he has a whole ocean of words pushing to spill out. It’s Jody who urges Dean into the car, her hand on his head to keep him from knocking his skull. It’s Jody who closes the door.

Dean doesn’t pay attention to what happens after that.


	42. Threads

Dean refuses to stay at Jody’s. She refuses to let him just drive off. 

They set off a few hours after getting back to Jody’s place, when Dean’s awareness of the world around him has seeped back enough to drive without it being a death sentence. It takes a long time to get to the bunker, and Dean drives with Hannah at his side, Michael in the back. Between them, they’ve added every spell and sigil and restraint that might have a chance of keeping the archangel down, but it’s more than likely the only thing keeping them safe is that Michael’s still not woken up. 

Sam is driving with Jody. Dean left them behind within ten minutes of setting out.

Hannah tries to talk to him, just once, but Dean doesn’t answer, and she doesn’t try again.

As he drives, he keeps an eyes on the scenery, checking for lines or ruptures. He doesn’t see anything. Sam phones him and Hannah answers, reporting that Sam’s been in touch with Garth and others, and they’ve all seen the lines, have all had the lines pass through them. None of them are hurt. There have been no new reports of deaths from that cause. Dean knows he should care. 

He feels a distant relief when he pulls the Impala to a stop in the bunker’s garage, but he doesn’t stop until Hannah’s helped him shift Michael down to the dungeon and they’ve set up their protections there. Sam walks in as they’re finishing, and Dean drops the chalk he’s just used and manages not to brush too close to Sam on the way out. 

Hannah and Sam can sort it out between them as to whether they keep a watch on their prisoner. Dean’s too tired, his head’s too full of dull pressure, to work out if there’s any point.

Jody turns up in his room minutes after he lies down on his bed, but she doesn’t speak to him. She just watches him for a minute, before shaking out a blanket and draping it over him. She shuts the door when she leaves, and Dean lies staring into the dark. 

 

****************************************************************

 

“He’s still out cold. I don’t know what that blast did to him, but we haven’t had a peep.”

Dean hears Jody’s voice from the library. He pauses, rolling his shoulders and leaning his neck to the side. He doesn’t know how long he’s been asleep, but long enough for a crick to set in. His whole body feels like its been pummeled. 

“Yeah, well he’s our only lead to Cas,” Sam says, and Dean’s attention sharpens. “I can’t get him through a summons, there’s been no noise from him angel-radio and he hasn’t been in touch through any human methods.”

“You traced his phone?” And of course Jody would ask that. She’s all too used to tracking the human way.

“Far as I can make out, it doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Great.” He hears Jody sigh, a huff of air that sounds as annoyed as it does resigned. “You gonna go tell Dean? You can’t avoid each other forever, Sam.” That has the sound of something she’s said before.

Sam doesn’t answer, and Dean steels himself to join them.

“Hey,” he says, as he steps into the brighter light of the library, offering Jody as much of a smile as he can manage. “So not a peep from Cas, then?”

He looks at Jody, who raises her eyebrow and turns pointedly to Sam. Sam clears his throat.

“Er. Yeah. Far as we can make out, he’s not anywhere.” Even with Dean not looking at him, Sam rushes on as though he can see the expression on Dean’s face. “But the archangels are linked, so if we can get Michael awake, we can use him to track down Cas.”

“Right.” It’s all he can make himself say. 

“Hannah’s gone back to heaven. She thinks she may be able to find information on archangels, maybe. Perhaps something that’ll help us get Michael conscious. Maybe she’ll find something more direct. Some way to find Cas herself. She’s promised to let us know as soon as she’s got anything.”

He nods, no words left in him. Or maybe there are too many words, all clogged up in that darkness, which, wherever else it’s gone, seems to have filled his throat almost to the brim. When he thinks of talking to Sam, anyway. 

“I need food,” he says to Jody, and leaves. 

He’s most of the way through a sandwich when Jody joins him, sliding onto the stool opposite and resting her elbows on the table. 

“The way I see it,” she says, “you got choices. You can stay here, not talking to Sam, and see how well that works out for you. Again. Yes, I know. Some of it, at least. Enough to know the two of you need to find a new game plan.”

Dean swallows his bite of chicken and mayo and fixes Jody with a stare that should have told her to back off. Apparently, she sees it differently, the look on her face making it clear she’s going nowhere.

“Fine,” he says. “What are my other choices, then? Because in case you didn’t notice, Sam tried to kill Cas. He hurt Cas, bad enough that he near cut off one of my limbs. And you want me to, what, go in their and braid his hair or some shit?”

“Braiding can be Plan E,” Jody says, “right after Plan B, the two of you make a clean break and split up for good, and Plan C, pretend it didn’t happen and just make yourself talk to him like you didn’t watch him take a knife to your…friend.” He must have imagined the tiny pause before that last word, because Jody’s face hasn’t shifted at all. 

“So what’s Plan D?” he asks.

“Oh, Plan D?” Now, she shifts, sitting back as though she’s suddenly more relaxed. Dean wonders if anyone’s ever fallen for that. “Well, Plan D’s the really scary one. That’s where you and Sam sit down and actually talk. And I mean really talk, Dean. No emotional statements and back to pushing everything down.” 

Oh, fuck. Don’t say Jody’s read those books, too. He’s wound too tight to even spend time hoping she skipped the sex scenes. 

“That ain’t happening.”

Her voice is softer when she answers him and it’s all the more terrifying because he hers real concern there. Real care. 

“I know what you’ve lost in the past Dean, some of it not long ago. I’d have liked to have met her. And I know what we’re all skirting around saying, here, too. But you still have Sam. Right now, you still have Sam. But only if the two of you clear out this crap that’s been building around up for years. What Sam did was awful. Really. But Bobby told me some of what happened to set those Leviathan loose, and as far as I can see there’s plenty of reason for Sam to have stayed mad at Cas. But he didn’t. Did he?”

Dean knows he must look mulish. He does nothing to sort it out. 

“And Sam, well, Sam told me a bit about what happened with that other angel. Gadril?” she says, and must be doing a really good job of ignoring the way Dean’s whole body tightens up, because she pushes right on. “I don’t know if he’s forgiven you, but you got past it enough to keep going.”

“So you’re saying we should go with Plan C?” Dean asks.

“Like Hell I am,” Jody says. “And see you end up back in one of these situations again in a few months? A few years at best? You’ve never struck me as a coward, Dean. You need to go all out for the scary plan, because the two of you are my family, too, and I hate to see family hurting each other like this. And that’s all I’m going to say about that for now. I’ve got to go make a few phone calls, check in on the almost benevolent tyrant who convinced me to let her go off to camp. And Donna needs an update.”

“Donna? You guys still in touch.”

“You better believe it,” Jody says, and leaves Dean to his own thoughts. 

Jody has people to call. That’s good. Right now, Dean has no-one to call to talk this over, or to check in with. He knows, in theory, that there are people who’d pick up the phone if he called, and he knows his warped morality is all tied up with why his list of people he’ll call has always been so short. Shorter, now. It seems like whenever he gets a new name on that list, it’s just holding a place until he can put the name on a grave. 

He wonders if it would have been kinder to let Sam stay dead, that first time. He wonders if Cas still felt every resurrection was a punishment. Feels. If he feels they are a punishment. 

Cas has run the whole world through with threads, and Dean feels like the only threads he’s ever had tying him to people are snapped or, in the case of Sam, fraying. He sits and tries to decide if he even wants to repair it.


	43. Frayed thread

Sam’s sitting at one of the tables, a book open in front of him. He isn’t looking at it. He has his phone in his right hand, but he isn’t using that, either.

“So,” Dean says, and does Jody’s trick of pretending not to see how Sam jumps and looks round, as though he’s considering running, “I guess we’re overdue a talk.”

If he’d swung at Sam with a crowbar, there’d have been less shock on show.

“A talk?” Sam asks. “With words? Us?”

“Well, don’t break anything, Sammy. You don’t want to talk, we won’t talk.”

“No!” Sam pushes up from his chair as Dean turns, his hand out. “No, I want to. I want to talk. I just,” he says, sinking back down when Dean stays where he is, “I didn’t think you would.”

“Can’t say it’s exactly top of my list,” Dean says, before it occurs to him that it is. That’s exactly what it is. Jody gave him a list of options and he’s chosen this one. It doesn’t get rid of the anger, but he does his best to push it back until it isn’t deafening him anymore. “But maybe we should give it a try.”

He sits, and neither of them say anything for a while. 

Sam plays with his phone, turning it round and round in his hands, and Dean rearranges his arms, his legs, until it gets to the point that he wants to get back up and flee. He refuses to let himself.

“So,” he says, because one of them has to say something, and he can’t be blamed if this is what springs to mind, “what did Michael have to say to convince you to butcher Cas?”

Sam stills, and swallows. 

“Dean,” he says. That appears to be it.

But now that he’s started, and even though he came in here to sort this out, Dean can’t stop. Or doesn’t want to. Whichever.

“Did it at least take some talking round? Because I remember you saying that I’d put an angel ahead of you. Was it Cas you meant? You been holding a grudge, Sammy? Not liking having a baby brother?”

“What? No. Dean, that’s…” Sam adjusts the way he’s sitting, and it’s like when he’s mentally upping his game with a witness. However bad Sam’ feeling over what’s happened, he’s obviously not just going to let Dean lay into him. “Okay, first, I love Cas. He’s my best friend, Dean. No, you listen. And yeah, I don’t like it when you throw my mistakes in my face and make such a point about how someone else is so much more trustworthy, but it isn’t like Cas has escaped that treatment, either. So, no. No, I did not leap on Michael’s suggestion. Everything he said, every source he suggested I check, they all said the only way to sort the Darkness was to trap it in someone and scatter them, something powerful. That’s why the humans all died. Not strong enough to anchor it.”

Dean opens his mouth, but Sam rolls right on over him. 

“And I argued, I pleased, for some other way to do this than with Cas. I demanded he convince me that Cas was already too far gone to save, and you have to admit that we’ve both suffered from Cas going darkside before, so don’t you even try to tell me that’s some kind of no-go area. Dean, we summoned Death. You remember that? You remember the look on Cas’ face when you told Death to kill him? Because I do.”

“So you thought you might as well have another go?”

“No.” Sam sounds disgusted. 

The silence returns, heavy and heaving, and Dean almost bails. Almost. But Jody’s words are still circling in his mind, and he grips the edge of the table as though it actually has the power to make him see this through. 

“Let’s just… Let’s just say, for the moment, that Michael’s given you all this evidence, that he’s set it out as irrefutable proof that Cas is turning into a second Devil, that there’s no saving him, that he has to die to get Michael out of the Cage and he has to be…” He has to pause and let the nausea settle. He pushes on. “He has to be cut up for it to work. And that’s a lot of steps, there, Sam.” Sam sighs and nods, and at the very least Dean has to accept that Sam looks pained. “Even then, why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“I told you,” Sam says. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

“You didn’t tell me all of it,” Dean says. “You told me that spell was an attempt at a cure.”

“Because by then I could see you weren’t going to go for it,” Sam says, and, yeah, he sounds regretful, but not so much about the lying or about the spell itself. It’s more like he’s sorry the situation demanded it. 

“You lied to me.”

“You wouldn’t have let me cast the spell.”

“Damn straight,” Dean says, his voice rising. It takes a fight to bring it back down so he can go on without this turning into a full on brawl. “And this isn’t the first time you’ve gone ahead with a spell when you shouldn’t have. When I’ve told you to stop.”

“You’ve got no moral high-ground about lying, or keeping things from people, or making decisions the other person won’t want,” Sam says, his voice dangerously steady. 

It’s not like they’ve ignored that. Not really, whatever Jody says. They have talked about the whole angel possession thing before. It’s just they never exactly finished the conversation. Not properly. 

“That was to save you.”

“This was to save everyone,” Sam counters.

“Not Cas!” 

And he wonders if that’s it. If Sam had lied about killing someone else, like, let’s face it, Dean lied about Amy, would Dean be reacting this way? From they way Sam’s looking at him, he’s working through something, too.

“And let’s be honest, Dean,” Sam says, and he’s partway between the way he speaks to a victim and the way he speaks to a suspect: firm, steady, but with some undercurrent of sympathy. “You asked if I was jealous of having a baby brother? You now that crap. Cas might be like a brother to me, but he isn’t that to you, and I know I screwed up with Charlie, I do, and we haven’t sorted through that either, but with Cas, I honestly believed he was already gone, and he was going to take everyone with him. And I still have enough distance from him that I will be able to pull the trigger if it really comes to that. I don’t believe Cas could kill you.” He may or may not catch Dean’s flinch at that. Either way, he goes on. “And I’m pretty sure you’d have trouble with him, even if you really knew it had to be done.”

“I didn’t kill you.” Dean throws it at Sam like an accusation. “And look where that got us. We still don’t know what it’ll mean that Death’s gone.”

“But we have at least dealt with the Darkness,” Sam says.

And maybe it is that simple for him, in some way. Maybe, if the equation balances out, that’s enough. Not that he felt that way about Gadreel, but then, that one lost them Kevin. 

And this whole mess has lost them Charlie, and maybe…

This whole mess has lost them Charlie.

Whichever way Dean looks at it, Sam and him have both messed up. It’s just been Sam’s turn most recently. 

“I’m still pissed at you,” he says.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “I’m pissed at me, too.”

It’s not fixed, not by a long shot, but it’s a start. Dean just wishes there weren’t so many ghosts sitting at the table with them, and they’re not even the kind he can banish with salt and iron.


	44. Marked Earth

It’s two more days before Michael wakes up. 

In the meantime, Dean and Sam have had reports from other hunters and contacts confirming that no more people have died riddled with dark lines. They have heard from Hannah, who phoned them to confirm that Cas’ plan should have worked. At least, as far as the angels can tell, the earth is settled. Safe. Hannah has said they’ll keep monitoring it. She’s also said they can find no trace of Castiel and no way to locate him. As far as she knows, Michael will have to wake on his own time, but she offers to take him to Heaven. Dean refuses.

It’s Sam who tears into the library to tell Dean that Michael’s conscious, and when Dean gets to the dungeon there’s a faint hum of tension running under his skin. This is it. This is what he’s got his hopes pinned on. 

“Where’s Cas?” he asks, as soon as he’s in the room.

Michael sits in the middle of a circle of holy fire, the one thing they can be sure will hold an archangel, and looks up at Dean. Dean’s never seen the guy so casual, like he hasn’t worked out he’s being held captive. He has one leg drawn up, an arm resting on the bent knee. 

“I am told Cassiel left quite the crater behind him,” he says, slow and calm. “And I can feel the Darkness’ potential resonating through everything around me.”

“That’s not an answer,” Dean says. 

“Yes, Dean,” Michael replies. “It is. Cas was acting as anchor.”

“Yeah. I got that.” Dean swung a chair around and set it down just outside the circle, dropping into it and leaning on the back to watch Michael. “Like you said, all that potential, it’s in the whole damn Earth now, so Cas isn’t an anchor anymore.”

A smile curves the edges of Michael’s lips and he tilts his head. Dean’s hands clench into fists. 

“No, Dean. Once an anchor, you stay an anchor.”

“Then why didn’t you need to scatter your precious Lucifer? He was an anchor.”

Michael’s smile turns sympathetic, as though he’s having to explain something to a small child and knows it will only cause upset, tears before bed. 

“My father concentrated the infection, sealed it, but the Mark made it transferable. Once Cain took the Mark, Lucifer no longer carried the Darkness. He kept the taint of it, but not the thing itself. Castiel cast his spell with the Darkness still in him. He did not purge it from him.”

That strange energy under Dean’s skin grows, wraps around his bones. He has trouble staying on this side of the fire. 

“What are you getting at, Michael? Do you know where Cas is or don’t you?” If he says he doesn’t, Dean will find ways to be sure. 

“He’s here, Dean,” Michael says.

Dean tenses, looks around. It’s possible Cas has flown in. It’s possible that spell put Cas back to normal, or normal as far as Dean’s concerned, with no huge, night-sail wings, no writhing tentacles, no galaxy-eyes studding his flesh. He could be in here.

He’s not.

“Don’t you mess with me-” he starts.

Sam steps forwards, drops his hand on Dean’s shoulder, and Dean manages not to shrug it off. They’ve a long way to go still, and Dean’s not sure they’ll make it, but they’ve talked some more since the other day and he’s finding it easier to suppress the urge to slam his fist into Sam’s face. 

“Dean,” Sam says, and there is far too much of sympathy in that, far too much of some understanding Dean is very sure he doesn’t want to hear. “Cas was bonded with the Darkness. Cas sent the Darkness out into everything…”

Dean takes a breath. It’s harder than it should be.

“No,” he says. “No, you are not telling me that Cas is here because he’s literally everywhere. That’s…he has a body.” Had a body, and it hadn’t been just the one, had it? He’d seen Cas change, seen things that should have sent him screaming. Cas never said if that was his normal form, and there’d been that comment about being a length of light, or something, way back. What was Cas, really? “Cas can’t just have poured a little bit of himself into every fucking rock and tree on the planet.”

Except it sounded a lot like something Cas would do, somehow.

“Not just rocks and trees,” Michael says. “Into everything. In a way, Cassiel is with you now, as close as he has ever been. Of course,” he muses, lowering his gaze to his hand, as though this is such a simple and obvious fact that it’s hardly worth paying attention to, “I suppose everyone is just as close to him now. Not how I would have done it, but at least it works.”

“You’re not making any sense,” Dean tries, but he knows there’s no conviction there, knows both Michael and Sam can hear that. 

“Yes. I am.” There is total conviction in Michael’s words. “What Cassiel has done, it is something that did not occur to me. He was always a brilliant tactician, a taker of risks, and knowing you has only increased his creativity. Cassiel has taken our father’s Mark and has adapted it. The whole world carries it now. He has set the Mark on the Earth itself, and on all it contains, but to do it he had to do the same with himself.”

Dean opens his mouth, but he can’t process this. Instead, he sits in silence as Sam speaks, his hand the only thing grounding Dean just now.

“The whole world carries the Mark of Cain? Are you kidding? The whole world… Is everyone going to be like…like Dean was?”

“The Mark was simply a way of containing that potential in one place. It twisted the bearer because it was too much for any one being, even the brightest of all the archangels, to carry alone. Shared like this, it is different. It simply ensures the energy, the potential of the first state to exist, is fused in all things, and will remain that way. As will Cassiel. It is impressive.”

It might be impressive, but Dean’s having trouble getting past devastating. Cas isn’t dead this time, but he’s certainly gone.


	45. Last Blade

Tearing the library apart, threatening Michael, summoning Crowley, they all lead to the same result. Cas is gone. Crowley laughs as he says it, but there’s something else there, too. Crowley insists on a glass of scotch before he goes, and Dean has the odd feeling that the demon’s holding some kind of wake. 

It’s another two weeks before Dean throws a book across the room and sinks into the nearest chair, every source that has anything even close to relevant telling him the same thing: there is no way to bring Cas back without bringing the Darkness back, too. 

Sam almost carries Dean to bed that night, and in the morning he wakes up to find every bottle of bourbon missing and Jody and Hannah in the bunker. They both stay until Sam loses the nervous edge and Dean finally says out loud that there’s no way to undo Cas’ spell. 

They let Hannah take Michael, Dean only half listening as she assures them steps will be taken to make him almost as secure as he was in the Cage. Michael smiles as she leads him away. He says it will be pleasant to see Heaven again. 

Dean gives it some time, talks some more to Sam, even sits with him and giant mugs of hot chocolate to watch the latest season of Game of Thrones. It’s all hollow. 

Sure, they’re getting somewhere, the two of them, inching their way to some better understanding, but at the moment it’s not a done deal. It’s potential. 

Every now and then, Dean finds Sam staring at nothing, a look almost of wonder on his face. He ignores it for a while, still finding their old easiness is a long way from being back, but when he comes across Sam holding an angel blade, a look on his face that speaks of deep thought and an almost-smile playing at the edges of his lips, Dean has to know what’s going through his brother’s mind. They’ve promised each other this, that they’ll try to ask more, try to answer. Not all the time. They haven’t become different people overnight. But sometimes.

“It’s one of his,” Sam says, when Dean asks, and he holds it out. “Hannah still had some, when Cas cast the spell. She hadn’t thrown them all.”

“That’s Cas’?” Because, if it is, then it’s part of Cas, isn’t it? That’s how Dean understood it, even if he didn’t really get it. 

“Yeah.” Sam holds it out, but Dean waves him away. “It’s strange,” Sam says, “but I keep getting hit by this realisation. I mean, he’s gone. I know that. But he also isn’t. When you think about it, Dean, Cas is here. He’s right here. Everywhere.”

“You saying Cas is in that coffee mug?” Dean asks, instinct kicking in and making him shy away from the moment, but even though Sam laughs softly and agrees, even though Dean turns the talk to other things, Sam’s words replay in his mind. 

He doesn’t feel like Cas is everywhere. He feels like Cas is dead, that he was torn away from Dean. It’s almost like when Cas was back in Purgatory. Dean knew the guy was probably still alive, but being trapped in another realm had made him as good as dead. He hadn’t really been lying when he’d let Sam believe Cas had died. 

Dean had no body to bury or burn then, either. 

He moves quietly through the bunker in the early hours, a need to do this overtaking any ability to wait, to plan. He finds what he needs quickly enough and is in the Impala and driving long before it’s light. He’s left Sam a note, and he knows Sam might like to come, too, but Dean needs to do this alone. Some of the things Sam said when they talked that first time, some comments he’s made since, make Dean sure that Sam will understand. 

With the window down, the night breeze blows in, brushing through Dean’s hair. It’s easier to imagine Cas really is with him. He imagines his friend is in the passenger seat, staring out of the window with that pinched brow he often had, sitting in silence because Cas could do that for hours and not find it strange. As long as Dean doesn’t look round, he can pretend.

He pulls over just before the dawn, leaving the Impala behind and making his way into a stand of trees. It’s a place he’s stopped before. Cas was with him then. Dean pulled over to sort a flat, and Cas wandered off into the trees. Dean follows the narrow trail Cas took back then, not rushing. There’s no need to rush.

As he walks, he touches his hand to tree trunks, runs his fingers over the leaves of bushes. He tells himself, over and over, that Cas is in all of them. If he tells himself enough times, it might start to seem true. The talks he’s being having with Sam, they were about being true, about accepting each other’s truth, much though Dean mocked Sam when he used that phrase. Dean has to accept this truth.

He reaches the rock as the sky blushes gold, the dawn gilding everything, and he settles himself on the large, smooth stone and closes his eyes, tilting his face up to the light. 

Cas sat here, that time they stopped. Dean found him once the car was ready to go, sitting peacefully, a rare time when no-one was trying to kill or manipulate or use him. Dean made fun of him at the time, saying Cas should just find himself a little cottage in the wood if he liked them so much, that he should talk to the animals and learn to sing with them. Cas gave him one of those tiny smiles and told Dean he’d think about it.

“I suppose you could think I’m kicking you out again, Cas,” he says now, finding he needs to do this out loud. “I’m not, buddy. I’m really not. It’s just… I guess it hasn’t really sunk in. I don’t believe it like Sam does, that you’re part of all things. Does that mean you can hear me, now? I hope so. I like to think I’m not talking to myself, here, Cas.”

He sighs and opens his eyes, taking in the peace. It’s a good spot. 

“So, like I say, I don’t believe it. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But I still feel like you’re there, trailing around after me, and I can’t take it. I need you to be somewhere, just one place. I need to give you a grave.”

This thought has grown in him for days, but Sam’s words brought it to bloom. 

“It’s not that I want you gone. I just need space to get used to the idea you aren’t going to pop up, or drive up in that ugly ass car of yours. I can’t hear your voice or see your eyes or try to make you laugh, now, and it’s too much. One day, perhaps I’ll get my head around this. Hell, maybe you really can hear me anywhere, like before. Still be a bit lonely if I know you aren’t ever going to answer, but perhaps I’ll work back up to chatting to you, hey? Telling you about my day. Let you know how it’s going with Sam.”

He stops again and reaches into his jacket. The angel blade shines dully in the morning light. Dean turns it in his hands.

“This is really part of you, somehow,” he says. “It’s not got as many eyes.”

He had more to say. He’s had words thronging his head ever since he saw that crater, words he think might have surprised Cas. Or maybe not. But now, he can’t get them out. 

Sliding from the rock, he digs down deep enough that no-one should find anything, and sets the blade in the bottom. 

“Just because I need to make myself accept this, man, okay? This isn’t me giving up. You know some way to get back to me, you take it, you hear? But I gotta do this, for now, so I’m not always looking round for you. Hell, I feel like I’ve been looking round for you for years. And you know how Sammy and I have let it twist us, always searching to bring each other back. Look, I don’t agree with what Sam did, but he was right about something. Sam and me, we’ve danced around needing to let each other go, and I can’t make that same mistake with you, so this is-”

He stops, his throat tight, and almost picks the blade back up, almost tucks it safely back into his jacket.

“Fuck, Cas. I do not want to do this, but I can’t let this be another case of a Winchester dragging someone back and nearly killing the world. And it’s not like you’re free of that. You did your fair share of bringing us back. So, you find a way home, and I’ll be waiting, but I am not going to make the same mistake again. I am not going to tear the Earth apart to get you back.”

He’s no good at this. Sam might have been able to think of something, but he doesn’t want Sam here just now. This is between Dean and Cas. 

Standing, Dean brushes the dirt off his jeans and knows he hasn’t said enough. A lot of what he wants to say he has to keep safe, for if, or when, Cas gets home. 

Giving up on finding words that will make this feel finished, he scoops the dirt back into the hole, patting it down and setting a stone over it, a smaller one than Cas’ seat. There. One angel, buried. More or less.

“Guess now I gotta move on,” he says. “But I meant it, you know that, right? You find a way back, and I will be right here.” He pauses, takes a moment to blink back tears, and knows there’s either too much to say to be done in one day, or nothing else that needs saying at all. “Bye, Cas.”

Walking away is hard. It’s more than leaving one angel-blade. It’s leaving behind his ingrained decision to tear apart whatever he has to in order to bring his family back. Maybe he’ll change his mind, find a lead that he can’t ignore, but he swears to himself, and to Cas, that he isn’t going to look. He’s going to focus on picking through everything with Sam, on working out how to be himself again now that the Mark is gone and there’s nothing threatening to destroy the whole world. 

And for the time being, the potential he’s always had with Cas will rest in the earth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not the end. It just feels like a natural break point for this part of the story. And I want to have this part done in my mind before Season 11 can turn up, so I'm tying up here for the time being. 
> 
> I haven't tagged Major Character Death because Cas is not dead, and this is not over. ;)


	46. Sequel

Not really a chaper. Just a head's up to people who follow this one that I have started posting the sequel as the second part in this series. :) :) :) The sideways frogs want you to read it... :) :) :)

**Author's Note:**

> The sequel is up and building up fairly well. And it'd be lovely to hear from people over on tumblr, too, where I'm [humanformdragon](http://humanformdragon.tumblr.com/).


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